Feature: The Problems of the Post-Racial Politician Operating in an Economic Downturn and Facing an Electorate Still Largely Segregated Along Lines of Class and Skin Color

THE THIRD TIME NUTTER FIELDS QUESTIONS about his black identity from me, a white reporter, I ask if he ever felt caught between two worlds: the mostly black environment of Impulse and West Philadelphia, and the largely white world of Wharton, Prep and Xerox.

“We all live in one big world,” he replies. “For a lot of us, especially children of the post-civil-rights era, our parents strongly encouraged us to get as much education as possible, see as much of life and the world as you can, and [told us] that life is a multifaceted, multicultural experience.”

As an aside, he notes that Xerox is now run by a black woman, Ursula M. Burns, who joined the company around the same time Nutter was working there. Nutter didn’t mention this, but Burns was raised by a single mother in a New York housing project. Like Nutter, she went to a Catholic high school and went on to get an Ivy League degree. The Mayor’s point, I think, is that there are a lot of black men and women from low-to-middle-class urban backgrounds who have managed to figure out how to get ahead in the world. So he finds perplexing the notion that there might be some tension between his Prep/Wharton identity and his race. Wasn’t he supposed to work hard, stay out of trouble and try and make something of himself?

“I’m a very proud black man,” Nutter says. “I’m proud of where I grew up, who my friends are, and I’ve never forgotten where I came from or how I got to be where I am today. It is an integral part of my being and existence.” That doesn’t mean he’ll apologize for being just as comfortable in all-white environments as in all-black ones.

When I ask Nutter if he thinks some African-American voters share Street’s view of him as “just a mayor with dark skin,” he acknowledges, in a roundabout way, that the answer is probably yes: “It is impossible for you or me to know about all the things that are going on in someone’s mind. … It’s very personal.”