Key Black Group : Buppies: New Power in Politics

Stumping for reelection to his fourth term in Los Angeles recently, Mayor Tom Bradley was surrounded by more than 100 well-dressed, young black professionals at a fund-raiser in fashionable Ladera Heights. The mayor looked around the room and was astounded.

“There aren’t more than six faces here that I know,” said the mayor, who prides himself on knowing the movers and shakers in the black community.

Bradley had just encountered a new, under-40 political base to be reckoned with, an emerging phenomenon in American politics that campaign strategists are just beginning to recognize as a unique group in the electorate: young black urban professionals, also known as buppies.

Not Reluctant to Help

Philosophically, they differ not only from their white counterparts--the upwardly mobile, young urban professionals, yuppies--but also from other blacks. They are more politically active, more critical of traditional black leaders, more distrustful of whites in general and, most importantly, more likely than other blacks to vote. And as Bradley and other leading black American politicians are learning, buppies are not reluctant to help--financially and otherwise--to elect those they support.

Bradley quickly recognized this trait among his supporters that night, and, when he asked for their “time, energy and I hope some day your money,” they responded with donations totaling about $10,000. With Bradley, 67, considering another campaign for governor, there now is talk of forming a young black professionals group to back him.

In Chicago, Mayor Harold Washington’s campaign for mayor in 1983 saved hard-to-come-by money by using the talents of young black computer technicians. By day, the technicians toed the line in corporate positions and, by evening, used their expertise to do computer mailings for Washington’s underdog campaign, which eventually raised $25,000 from young black professionals.

Role in Philadelphia

And in Philadelphia later the same year, black attorneys not long out of law school were offering not only money but legal advice during W. Wilson Goode’s successful mayoral campaign. Black attorneys as a group raised more than $50,000 for the campaign, according to former Goode campaign official Susan Evans.

While these contributions of expertise and money are not especially large by big city standards, they may be harbingers of more to come.

A year after the Jesse Jackson presidential campaign captured the imaginations of many buppies, analysts say this small group--the best educated, most affluent blacks this country has ever produced--may have an influence beyond its numbers in national black politics.

“This is the key group to watch,” says Thomas E. Cavanagh, until recently a research specialist at the Joint Center for Political Studies, a national think tank of black political studies. “I think they are the key to where black politics is going in the future.”

New Twist of Concern

Studies suggest that buppies are likely to think twice before voting for candidates just because they are blacks or Democrats, Cavanagh said. Buppies share “the traditional black voter concerns of poverty and discrimination,” he said. But there is a “new twist of strong concern about black wealth and business opportunities.”

Buppies are forming groups that have historical roots in black professional organizations that burgeoned around the turn of the century in a reaction to Jim Crow separatism. But the new organizations reflect younger blacks’ growing impatience with the older generation. With their expectations for financial success higher than many of their parents’ and grandparents’, blacks in their late 20s to late 30s talk increasingly about tying economics to politics and black political progression to career progression.

And as the baby boom careerists that Jesse Jackson calls “the cream of the coffee which has risen to the top,” this elite group is the natural heir to the black leadership mantle worn for decades by ministers and leaders of traditional civil rights organizations, such as the NAACP and the Urban League.

Precisely how many buppies there are is not known. But according to recent census figures, about 13% of the approximately 5 million blacks between the ages of 25 and 34 have completed four years of college.

Power Growing

While this pool probably includes a relatively small number of affluent young black professionals, their potency within the black political structure is already visible--and growing. Buppies have disposable income and professional know-how, and black politicians are already beginning to make use of their advice by giving young blacks key roles in election campaigns and government administrations.

While similar in some ways to yuppies, a 1982 Los Angeles Times Poll indicated that blacks in this general age group, which grew up, via television, on a steady diet of riots, demonstrations and assassinations, are more liberal and socially conscious than whites of their age and have unique characteristics that separate them from other blacks.

The poll found that while political opinions of white yuppies did not differ dramatically from those of younger or older whites, buppies stood quite apart from blacks of other ages. It found, for instance, that young black urban professionals are more activist and more affluent; that they believe more strongly in their duty to vote; that they are more distrustful of whites, and are less satisfied with the performance of black leaders and elected officials.

This activism was underscored by a 1984 poll conducted by the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan that showed that 56% of college-educated blacks between the ages of 27 and 44 belong to black organizations; for other blacks, the figure was just 23%. About 86% of the college-educated said they had signed a petition, compared to 52% for blacks overall. In addition, they were twice as likely as most blacks to have attended a protest meeting.

Higher Wages

These college-educated blacks under 40 also earn more money than most blacks. As of 1983, the average black family income was $15,960; for college-educated blacks under 40, it was $22,000, said John Coder, chief of income statistics for the U.S. Census Bureau.

While blacks still make less than white workers in comparable jobs, those in the buppie category often work in private industry in major cities such as New York or Los Angeles, where a $40,000 salary for up-and-comers is common.

They are in large part beneficiaries of the civil rights struggle of the 1960s, which resulted in pressures to open up universities and professions to minorities. Those who are most politically active often say they define themselves by that era. Beyond protest, they have begun to organize, raise funds and use their own business contacts to enhance political power.

Their aggressive new stance is in part spurred by a feeling that, in spite of the social and professional gains they have made in the last several years, “We hear the door slamming behind us,” said one 30-year-old Los Angeles attorney, “and want to keep it pried open.”

‘Audacious Group’

“This is an audacious group behind those pinstriped suits,” said Ernie Green, one of the famous “Little Rock Nine” who integrated an Arkansas high school in 1957 and who served as an adviser to the Jackson campaign last year. “They see things through different, sometimes more demanding and politically sophisticated eyes than the black voters who have come before them. This group has always been exposed to whites, gone to school with them and worked with them. They are not in awe of them or the system. The Democratic Party, both political parties, will have to reckon with a new kind of black voter.”

Buppies differ somewhat from the traditional black middle class, sometimes derisively called the “black bourgeoisie.” The young black professionals of today are sons and daughters not only of other doctors, lawyers and teachers, but of butchers, barbers and domestics. They are often the first in their families to study and work in an integrated environment.

The group is burgeoning because of the increase of black college graduates in the late 1970s and early 1980s. About 1 million black students 18 to 34 years old were enrolled in college in 1981, double the number enrolled in 1970. Most of the increase took place during the early ‘70s, during the federal government’s push for affirmative action.

In interviews, they tried to define themselves.

Wince at Buppie Label

“While most of us can be labeled buppies, we all wince at that,” said Helene Colvin Wallace, the daughter of a librarian and a gas station owner. She was a chemistry major at Smith College, from which she was graduated at age 20, and is now the 30-year-old executive director of the mayor’s advisory commission on women’s affairs in Chicago. She was part of the New Chicago Committee, which raised a total of $25,000 for Harold Washington’s campaign.

“Blacks in my generation were most impressionable during the rah-rah time for revolutionaries . . . and we don’t expect to be held back because of skin color. Most of the people I know, accountants, bankers, doctors, contribute time or money to politics because we believe the right political climate will make it better for all of us, including relatives who may be just barely making it. We may have changed our m.o. ( modus operandi ) but not our principles.”

“Years ago, we picketed buildings because we didn’t know who the owners were, and we didn’t know how else to get our point across,” said Bruce Crawley, 39, a corporate vice president for First Pennsylvania Bank in Philadelphia and a former student activist at Temple University.

Sitting in his 12th-floor office across the street from City Hall, he has come a long way from the local public housing project where he grew up. “Now we pick up the phone and call the owner and try to persuade him. If I don’t know him, somebody I know does.”

“We have developed an active, functional and effective network, comparable to the old-boys network,” said Amelia Parker, 37, executive director for the Congressional Black Caucus. “Relative to the old boys, of course, it’s quite small, but the advantage is we just about all know each other or know somebody who does know.”

Small World

Jonelle Procope, 34, a New York attorney in real estate, says that the informal network stems from the fact that “it’s such a small black professional world.”

“All the black lawyers on Wall Street, the MBAs, know each other because there aren’t many. We start showing up at the same social affairs, and of course we end up discussing our similar concerns. We have that bond of being among the handful that have broken into that higher echelon of the private sector, and we naturally want to maintain what we have and expand opportunities for others.”

It is this combination of altruism and what Jackson and others call “enlightened self interest” that has spurred the creation of new politically active groups by young professionals. Even among affluent blacks, studies indicate that “there is a deep feeling that their position is precarious, that it could all be taken from them tomorrow,” said Cavanagh of the Joint Center. By organizing for political causes and sympathetic candidates, young black professionals say they hope to reap benefits for blacks in general and for themselves as they try to climb career ladders.

In major cities throughout the nation, political action committees are popping up, with names like the 21st Century Institute for Political Action, based in Washington, and the Progressive Alliance in Atlanta, all dedicated to political and economic power for blacks.

Nonpartisan Groups

Members of these groups are typically drawn from already existing black professional groups, such as the Barristers Assn. in Philadelphia or the Atlanta Exchange in Atlanta. Although they still have strong leanings toward Democrats, most of the new black political organizations are deliberately nonpartisan for political leverage.

In Los Angeles, a group of black professional men under 40 have formed the Collective Enterprise Group, a “networking” organization that requires a $1,000 membership fee. Councilman David Cunningham, 50, an official with hopes for higher office, has enthusiastically volunteered to act as a mentor and a financial backer.

Larry Irvin, a 31-year-old executive at a West Hollywood political consulting firm, said the group intends to do community work, such as promoting scholarships, as well as holding fund-raisers and endorsing candidates. And, he said, the members are looking for ways of pooling their money in investments.

In Atlanta, a similar group of men and women called the Progressive Alliance helped draw up a resolution urging against investment of city pension funds in firms doing business in South Africa, said attorney Amanda Seward, 29.

“One official who voted for it and worked with us let us know, in effect, that election time was coming, and he wanted us to know he was supportive of our efforts,” she said.

Some Switch to GOP

Some buppies are finding that Republican ideas more nearly match their own and are quietly switching affiliations.

Wallace, although a Democrat, believes that her generation is “socially progressive but not as fiscally liberal” as generations that have gone before.

Carmen Hawkins, a 29-year-old Los Angeles attorney and an active Democrat, says she is “finding more and more closet Republicans” among her peers. While she says she does not support the GOP “because of Reagan’s blatant anti-civil rights policies,” she added, “I’m becoming more and more critical of those who are always crying for help, yet are not doing anything to help themselves.”

Mary Helen Thompson, 37, of the American Assn. of Blacks in Energy in Washington, who also is a Democrat, says she knows several persons who “have quietly defected to the Republican Party. When I’m home in Boston, you often can’t get people to tell you their political affiliation,” she said. “I wouldn’t say they’re going in droves, but the element is there.”

One prominent black Democrat who switched to the GOP this year was William Lucas, 57, chief executive of Wayne County, Mich., who now is being touted as a potential gubernatorial candidate.

He said that young black professionals “are thinking for themselves. They’re mostly Democrats now because their parents were, and they felt they had no real options open to them, but I find the under-40 group to be much less concerned about my party affiliation and more concerned with my performance in office, which is as it should be. I think it’s just a matter of evolution before we see more young blacks taking leadership in both parties.”

Promotion Problem

Many young black college graduates spend their first few years in a job being promoted at a regular rate and then “hit a ceiling and stop getting promoted,” said Elvin Moon, a Los Angeles black executive search consultant. In a nationwide survey of 1,200 black professionals in private industry that Moon conducted in April, about 76% said they were frustrated because they felt they would not be promoted, he said.

Another survey by the Institute for Journalism Education found that minority journalists are leaving the newspaper profession at three times the rate of their white colleagues. Most of those leaving were doing so because they sensed a lack of opportunity to advance, the study said.

Those feelings, along with conflicts between idealism and materialism, result in an attitude toward politics that Mark Harris, a 28-year-old deputy treasurer of Alameda County, called “somewhat schizophrenic.”

Clash of Ideas

He was referring to the clash between the 1960s radical idealism and the 1980s get-ahead drive felt by so many young black urban professionals.

One politically active Chicago attorney reflected those dual desires: “Sure, I want my BMW, I want to live comfortably, but I want health care for poor black people too.”

Whether the quest for a BMW meshes with overall betterment for blacks, who as a group are relatively poorer than they were 10 years ago, will be the test of this future group of leaders, said Donald Temple, president of the Washington-based 21st Century nonpartisan group. The group targets blacks ages of 25-35 to contribute money to affect the political process.

“First you have to have self-determination, because we’ve learned in this country that votes are great, but without money to back up your politics, people don’t take you seriously,” said Temple, 31.

“But we are also children of the ‘60s, and we know we wouldn’t be in the positions we’re in to make money without Martin (Luther King Jr.) or Malcolm (X). It remains to be seen if we have the kind of heart, the vision, to pull all those elements together.”