Bamboozled.

I don't know if anyone read the Post piece on the Cropp v. Fenty feud and the campaign literature Cropp's campaign distributed attacking Fenty, but it was an interesting read more for what it didn't say than what it did. Here's a quick Post description of the ad, noting that the person pictured isn't Adrian Fenty:

The brochure paid for by the Cropp campaign shows the back of a man wearing a white shirt with rolled-up sleeves, no visible hair -- Fenty shaves his head -- and a microphone in his hand. "Blind Ambition" reads the text on the cover next to the photo, which resembles the Ward 4 D.C. Council member.

Here's a copy of the printed attack ad (again from the Post website):

Now granted, Fenty is very light-skinned, but I'm willing to bet Cropp used a white model as a stand-in for Fenty, further playing with DC's racial politics by drawing attention to Fenty's mixed race background. The Post makes the fact that Cropp used a stand-in for Fenty a major issue, but never mentions why her campaign might do so, or how the image used may shape perception far beyond the words accompanying the image.

Hello, hasn't anyone read Barthes' Mythologies? In a town that's around 60% African American, it's worth the effort on Cropp's part to not only cast Fenty as the "white man's candidate," but also to cast him as "the white candidate."

As an interesting side note, a letter to the City Paper last Thursday clearly references the colorism within the African American community and in some white -- or mainstream political -- perceptions of the African American community. Leroy Thorpe, who supports Fenty, writes:

On the other hand, Adrian Fenty is, by American standards, a mulatto, which eases the fear in European-Americans. Fenty’s light skin and advanced degrees are acceptable socially to European-Americans; however, Fenty’s loyalty to his African-American fraternity and his frat brother Sinclair Skinner is incomprehensible to European-Americans who think Fenty should act like those
European-American-accepted house Negroes Clarence Thomas, Condoleezza Rice, and Sen. Barack Obama.

The validity of Mr. Thorpe's argument on the qualities of the individuals named is beside the point; all I'm looking to illustrate here is the racially inflected political realities that any DC politician must negotiate, or perhaps take advantage of.