Room Eight New York Politics: “Standing up for Clarence Norman(who would have thunk it)” :

Clarence, Carl, and Ethnicity and Machine Politics
Submitted by Jerry Krase (not verified) on Wed, 02/07/2007 - 6:11pm.
My colleague, Charles LaCerra, and I wrote a book "Ethnicity and Machine Politics" (UPA 1992) about the rise and fall of the Madison Club in Brooklyn. It was one of the most powerful local political clubs in the country at one time. The home for example of Stanley Steingut, Abraham Beam, Eugene Gold, Emmanual Celler, et al. A major point of the book is that the club organization was able, with much difficulty however, to weather the demographic changes in the district from Irish Catholic to Jewish and Italian Catholics as partners, or leaders but that (with racism) the ascendancy of African Americans and Afro-Caribbeans was too much to handle and the club self-destructed. I assume that many of the issues surrounding the county organization today are remnants of that "delicate situation." We argued that this was (or would be) a parallel phenomenon to the Borough, the city, the state and by further extension the nation.
On a personal note; I was very impressed with young Carl Andrews when I was doing community work and living in Prospect-Lefferts-Gardens. I supported him for his recent run for Congress even though I might have supported Yvette Clark if she had asked me first. I worked with her mom Una as well as Major Owens when together they were struggling against the essentially Euro-ethnics (I don't like the term "white") who tried their very best to keep especially non-white minorities (who became majorities) from taking their rightful position in the party. Brooklyn has produced some very exceptional political talent and some have very rough edges but they are (in my humble opinion) as good as any who have emerged from what we used to call the "machine." I am also amused that the assumption of shady (self-interested) dealing only emerges when one is talking in ethnic or minority group terms. We should stop thinking about politics as though it was a recreational, or leisure time activity of altruists as opposed to the hard-nosed business that it is.