It is historically significant that America’s four largest cities have Black mayors. Eric Adams of New York, Karen Bass of Los Angeles, Lori Lightfoot of Chicago and Sylvester Turner of Houston run municipalities where 18 million of us live. They are chief executives in charge of some of the most complex bureaucratic organizations in the United States.
We’re more than a generation removed from when Harold Washington became Chicago’s first Black mayor in 1983 or when David Dinkins made history in New York in 1989; cities and their racial and constituent ethnic communities have made major strides since then. But it surely still matters that African Americans — who continue in many ways to bear the brunt of poverty, crime and underperforming schools — are now in the driver’s seat of setting U.S. urban policy.
What matters more is that Adams, Bass, Lightfoot and Turner all won office and have so far sought to govern not through identity-based appeals, but by promising more effective government that through incremental improvements deliver safety, economic opportunity, quality education and better municipal services to all. All four mayors have vocal opponents on their ideological left flanks who wish they were hewed more to the pure progressive line.
