Denver and Boston: Why One City Elects Black Mayors and the Other Has Not

Denver’s population is only 10 percent black, and has never been above 12 percent in any Census, yet in July 2011 the city elected a black mayor. Michael Hancock, a former city councilman, is actually the second African-American mayor of Denver. Wellington Webb served the limit of three terms through 2003. Three of the city’s last four mayors have been of color. Federico Peña, a Mexican American, became the first in 1983. At 24 percent, Boston’s black population is twice as large as Denver’s and has been so throughout the three decades during which Denver has sent two African Americans to the mayor’s office. Boston has never elected a black mayor or, more broadly, one of color. An African American came the closest in 1983, when former state representative Melvin H. King placed second in the preliminary election before losing to City Councillor Raymond Flynn in a landslide in the general election. King remains the only black candidate who has run a competitive race for mayor in Boston. What accounts for the divergent outcomes in mayoral elections in the two cities? The traditional explanation within Boston’s black community has been its population is too small, an assessment premised on an unspoken assumption that racially polarized voting will prevail. The first black mayors elected in major northern cities did ride black majorities into office in the 1960s and 1970s, but in recent decades African American candidates have been winning urban mayoralties without that political advantage. How did Webb and Hancock win in a majority-white city

Commentary

It’s an explanation often heard around Boston. Why hasn’t the city ever elected a black mayor? Because the black community is “too small.” Why can’t the community sustain an FM radio station? And why does it have difficulty keeping afloat a weekly newspaper, even a soul food restaurant? Again, the answer comes: the community is too small. The irreconcilable flaw of this line of reasoning is exposed when it is expanded to the whole country. Black mayors have been elected in any number of cities with smaller black populations, proportionally, than the 25 percent in Boston—Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Denver, to name but three. Black-owned media and soul food restaurants manage to survive in those cities too. Boston’s black community, functionally, feels smaller than it is because it is so divided, into the old-line black Brahmins, the relative newcomers from the South, and the immigrants from the islands of the Caribbean, from Cape Verde and the rest of Africa. Except for mainland African immigrants, the presence of these groups is not new in the Commonwealth. As far back as the 1880s, West Indians who lived in Boston had the heft to publish a weekly newspaper, one, by the way, designed to appeal to a general black audience. The Cape Verdean population predates, by a century, the influx of southerners during the Great Migration

Commentary

Barack Obama has made history by dispatching to the dustbin another usage for the tiresome phrase “first black.” As president, he is also going to make the future, both during his term and long after. The country’s racial-ethnic landscape, with its dangerous crevices and sheer mountains, is about to change in monumental ways. His presence in the White House will promote more interracial dialogue, for one, and for the good of the country. This will not be a small change. The novelist Richard Wright once explained that he chose exile in Paris in the 1940s because he could not have an honest conversation about race in America. Though interracial contact and discussion has increased since then, not enough has come with candor. To enter a truly “post-racial” era, a period when race is recognized but does not shape attitudes, people will need to talk more and more honestly. President Obama and his black nuclear family, and his white, Kenyan, and Filipino extended families, are quite a group for stimulating that kind of conversation. Not all will be pleasant, if it is honest, but better that resentments are spoken aloud than squelched to smolder inside

The Personal and Family Challenges of Reentry: Interview with Helen Credle

For 40 years, Helen Credle has worked with prison inmates and exoffenders in Massachusetts, from inside or outside the state corrections system. The Boston native, who grew up in Roxbury, did not set out to become an advocate for prisoners and their families. Oddly, it was music that first took her inside prison walls and into that role. As director of community services for the New England Conservatory of Music, Credle organized concerts by bluesman B.B. King and balladeer Bobby Womack in state prisons. Her involvement grew deeper when the conservatory’s administrators and faculty members decided to teach inmates to play jazz, and the inmates then would perform in the auditoriums at maximum-security Walpole State Prison and medium security Norfolk State Prison nearby. The conservatory’s foray into altruistic music education came during a socially conscious era when compassionate white churchgoers and black activists volunteered in prisons, teaching classes and providing other services to inmates

It’s in the Backbone: Dance from Africa through the Diaspora, An Interview with DeAma Battle

Classically trained in dance, DeAma Battle became interested in Africa-rooted dance in the 1960s. She started performing the traditional dances from Africa that spread, via the Atlantic slave trade, to the United States, the Caribbean, and South America. She not only has performed those steps and movements, Battle has studied them, with master dancers from West Africa, Brazil, Haiti, Jamaica, and Cuba. One of her teachers and mentors was Chuck Davis, a leading African American teacher of traditional African dance. Her research has probed deeper, into the field abroad, on dance-study tours to Haiti, Jamaica, Ghana, Senegal, Morocco, and other countries with an African cultural heritage. Battle regards modern dance pioneer Katherine Dunham, who studied the cultural traditions of Haiti, as a role model. A dancer, artistic director, and choreographer, Battle also considers herself to be a dance archivist. In 1975, Battle founded the Art of Black Dance and Music in Somerville, Massachusetts, to perform and teach Africa-derived dances. One of the company’s goals has been to unify people of African descent “through the study of African-rooted dance, music, and folklore” to illustrate “cultural similarities within the African Diaspora.” In this interview with Trotter Review editor Kenneth J. Cooper, Battle discusses specific dances that Africa-descended people partake in in the Americas that incorporate traditional movements still performed in West Africa. Within the Diaspora, she identifies similarities between the traditional capoeira of Brazil and the break dancing popular in America in the 1970s. The African way of moving is so embedded, Battle notes, that it shows up even in the way black people who live on different continents walk. The interview was conducted in late 2013 at the Boston Conservatory of Music, where Battle teaches

Evolutionary rates and gene dispensability associate with replication timing in the Archaeon Sulfolobus islandicus

In bacterial chromosomes, the position of a gene relative to the single origin of replication generally reflects its replication timing, how often it is expressed, and consequently, its rate of evolution. However, because some archaeal genomes contain multiple origins of replication, bias in gene dosage caused by delayed replication should be minimized and hence the substitution rate of genes should associate less with chromosome position. To test this hypothesis, six archaeal genomes from the genus Sulfolobus containing three origins of replication were selected, conserved orthologs were identified, and the evolutionary rates (dN and dS) of these orthologs were quantified. Ortholog families were grouped by their consensus position and designated by their proximity to one of the three origins (O1, O2, O3). Conserved orthologs were concentrated near the origins and most variation in genome content occurred distant from the origins. Linear regressions of both synonymous and nonsynonymous substitution rates on distance from replication origins were significantly positive, the rates being greatest in the region furthest from any of the origins and slowest among genes near the origins. Genes near O1 also evolved faster than those near O2 and O3, which suggest that this origin may fire later in the cell cycle. Increased evolutionary rates and gene dispensability are strongly associated with reduced gene expression caused in part by reduced gene dosage during the cell cycle. Therefore, in this genus of Archaea as well as in many Bacteria, evolutionary rates and variation in genome content associate with replication timing

Evolutionary Rates and Gene Dispensability Associate with Replication Timing in the Archaeon Sulfolobus islandicus

In bacterial chromosomes, the position of a gene relative to the single origin of replication generally reflects its replication timing, how often it is expressed, and consequently, its rate of evolution. However, because some archaeal genomes contain multiple origins of replication, bias in gene dosage caused by delayed replication should be minimized and hence the substitution rate of genes should associate less with chromosome position. To test this hypothesis, six archaeal genomes from the genus Sulfolobus containing three origins of replication were selected, conserved orthologs were identified, and the evolutionary rates (dN and dS) of these orthologs were quantified. Ortholog families were grouped by their consensus position and designated by their proximity to one of the three origins (O1, O2, O3). Conserved orthologs were concentrated near the origins and most variation in genome content occurred distant from the origins. Linear regressions of both synonymous and nonsynonymous substitution rates on distance from replication origins were significantly positive, the rates being greatest in the region furthest from any of the origins and slowest among genes near the origins. Genes near O1 also evolved faster than those near O2 and O3, which suggest that this origin may fire later in the cell cycle. Increased evolutionary rates and gene dispensability are strongly associated with reduced gene expression caused in part by reduced gene dosage during the cell cycle. Therefore, in this genus of Archaea as well as in many Bacteria, evolutionary rates and variation in genome content associate with replication timing

Expression and activation of Α v Β 3 integrins by SDF-1/CXC12 increases the aggressiveness of prostate cancer cells

BACKGROUND Stromal cell-derived factor-1 (SDF-1 or CXCL12) and CXCR4 are key elements in the metastasis of prostate cancer cells to bone—but the mechanisms as to how it localizes to the marrow remains unclear. METHODS Prostate cancer cell lines were stimulated with SDF-1 and evaluated for alterations in the expression of adhesion molecules using microarrays, FACs, and Western blotting to identify Α v Β 3 receptors. Cell–cell adhesion and invasion assays were used to verify that activation of the receptor is responsive to SDF-1. RESULTS We demonstrate that SDF-1 transiently regulates the number and affinity of Α v Β 3 receptors by prostate cancer cells to enhance their metastatic behavior by increasing adhesiveness and invasiveness. SDF-1 transiently increased the expression of Β 3 receptor subunit and increased its phosphorylation in metastatic but not nonmetastatic cells. CONCLUSIONS The transition from a locally invasive phenotype to a metastatic phenotype may be primed by the elevated expression of Α v Β 3 receptors. Activation and increased expression of Α v Β 3 within SDF-1-rich organs may participate in metastatic localization. Prostate 67:61–73, 2007. © 2006 Wiley-Liss, Inc.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/55878/1/20500_ftp.pd