In this book, as in a series of articles and papers, as well as the edited volume Whose Black Politics? Cases in Post-Racial Black Leadership (2010), Andra Gillespie’s main theoretical and empirical project is to explain the dynamics of generational change in black leadership, from the racialized Civil Rights era cohort to the “postracial,” post–Civil Rights era generation. Gillespie is unclear in The New Black Politician as to what she means by the idea of postracial. She describes the idea of a postracial America as “farcical” to serious students of black politics, given the “reality of the persistent poverty and racial inequality that belies the claim of having entered a post-racial era” (p. 2). Yet she uses the term constantly in this book and in her related studies.

Apparently, by postracial, Gillespie means the emergence in the last decade or so of a “third wave” of black politicians, born immediately before or after passage of the 1960s Civil Rights laws. The first generation to come of age in the post–Civil Rights era, they, she generalizes, grew up in integrated neighborhoods, attended predominantly white, often elite schools from elementary to graduate studies, and matured in a postracial structure of ambition where the politics of “deracialization” was ascendant. Thus, in thinking about their careers, they assumed from the outset that they could, unlike their Civil Rights era predecessors, aspire to become governor, senator, or president because the white electorate was willing to vote for an ideologically and culturally mainstream black for any office. Gillespie labels this group “black political entrepreneurs” and the process in which they challenge old-guard Civil Rights–era black leaders “elite displacement.” Barack Obama, former Alabama Congressman Artur Davis, and Cory Booker are the archetypes, whom she labels in Whose Black Politics? “Ivy League upstarts.” The New Black Politician is a case study of Booker’s rise to power and governance in Newark.

This book is based on eight years of participant observation in Newark, where Gillespie became a supporter, friend, and admirer of Booker. Neither the pracademic nature of the study nor her relationship with Booker appears to affect the objectivity of the work.

The author has three principal concerns with the political entrepreneurs and their politics of elite displacement. First, she argues that in order to displace entrenched old-guard Civil Rights era incumbents, the political entrepreneurs often emphasize their “stellar credentials,” while suggesting that their opponents are incompetent, if not corrupt. This, she worries, may “amplify and reify the negative stereotypes that have plagued black politicians (racially transcendent or otherwise) for more than a century” (p. 10). However, little evidence from this book or her related studies appears to warrant this concern.

The second concern is that in pursuit of electability and a favorable reception by the mainstream media, political entrepreneurs tend to downplay structural and institutional explanations for racialized poverty and inequality, and this may make them less effective than Civil Rights–era black politicians in addressing these problems. Gillespie suggests that here, the evidence is not yet in, but she relates data comparing the younger, more deracialized members of the U.S. House with their older, more racialized colleagues, which suggests little difference in representation of black interests. She concludes that “as more and more black political entrepreneurs gain power, we will have more data which to test the hypothesis of which group actually does more to improve the material well-being of blacks” (p. 30).

Gillespie’s third concern is that, given the class and generational differences in the black community, perhaps it is time to rethink the idea of a monolithic black community and the “specious idea of a monolithic black agenda” (p. 10). She avers that the arrival of a critical mass of political entrepreneurs with their distinctive class backgrounds, stellar credentials, and moderate, deracialized postures may encourage this rethinking. This is the most puzzling part of the book, because undergirding the entire text is the idea that the efficacy of black politicians is to be measured by their success in realizing the “black agenda” of melioration and ultimate elimination of persistent, entrenched, racialized poverty and inequality.

A larger problem of the The New Black Politician as a case study in generational change in black politics is the focus on the Ivy League upstarts. Obama, Davis, and Booker are the exceptions rather than the rule in black politics. Since Reconstruction, black politicians have always been drawn from the advantaged class strata of the black community. In the Civil Rights era, all of the individuals elected mayors of large American cities, from Carl Stokes to David Dinkins, were college educated, and of the 43 black members of the House in 2012, all were college educated, mostly from historically black institutions or state universities. Booker was the first Ivy League–educated black mayor, and of the 43 black members of Congress in 2012, only five were Ivy League educated. An Ivy League education, therefore, may not be a useful basis for distinguishing new black politicians or understanding generational change in black politics. (Chicago Congressman Bobby Rush said of Obama, who emphasized his Ivy League pedigree in his effort to displace him in Illinois, “He went to Harvard and became an educated fool. We’re not impressed by these fools with those eastern elite degrees.”(Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics, 2009, p.107)).

Booker (Rhodes Scholar, graduate of Stanford and Yale Law) lost his first bid in 2002 to displace Sharpe James, the old-guard mayor of Newark. He won in his second attempt in 2006, after James withdrew. In the 2002 election, he lost the black vote and in 2006, although he won overwhelmingly, his “support was weakest among black voters” (p. 98). Gillespie describes Booker’s record as mayor as “marginally successfully” in dealing with crime, economic development, and job creation. In 2013, he overwhelmingly won New Jersey’s special election to the U.S. Senate. In 2000, Autur Davis (Harvard, Harvard Law) lost his first bid to unseat Earl Hillard, the old-guard Democratic congressman representing Alabama’s majority black district. In 2002, he defeated Hillard with the help of outside white donors and a redrawn district. In 2010, after voting against the Affordable Care Act and ignoring Alabama’s old-guard black establishment, he suffered a humiliating defeat in the Democratic primary for governor, losing the black vote by a near two-to-one margin. In 2000, Obama (Columbia, Harvard Law) failed in his effort to displace Congressman Rush, but four years later he was elected to the U.S. Senate and in 2008 became the first African American president.

Obama campaigned on the basis of his stellar credentials, and as a mainstream, moderate, deracialized candidate. In office, he has governed in a similar manner, steadfastly resisting pleas to address the worsening poverty and growing inequality among his own people, demonstrating that in the American political system, even the most powerful new black politician will not do very much about racialized poverty and inequality.

The problem of African American leadership is more difficult to solve than deciding whether racialized or deracialized black politicians are more effective in addressing poverty, because in recent years, the middle-class, system-integrated leadership as a whole has tended to ignore the problem or pay mere lip service to it. In 2005 shortly after Hurricane Katrina, Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA), one of the more militant of the old guard, admitted in a House floor speech that in recent years, the Congressional Black Caucus had forgotten about the poor, saying that Katrina was a “wake-up call” not only for President George W. Bush and the Congress but the Black Caucus as well. In her just-published book, Concordance: Black Lawmaking in the U.S. Congress from Carter to Obama, Katherine Tate shows that since the Carter administration, agreement or harmony has increasingly characterized the relationship among Democratic presidents, the House Democratic Caucus, and the Congressional Black Caucus on ignoring the problems of the so-called black underclass. This suggests the nature of the problem that Gillespie’s work elides; black politicians, whether old or new, whether graduates of Harvard or Howard, racialized or deracialized, will not do much to help the poor.

Gillespie uses Newark and Booker as case study to get theoretical and empirical leverage on generational change in black politics. The book, however, is a study in urban politics and mayoral leadership. In his campaign, Booker suggested that his credentials, technocratic skills, and pragmatism would allow him to find solutions to the entrenched problems of Newark. Gillespie concludes that because of “structural” constraints, “the promise of technocratic competence seems to have faltered,” and “even the best and the brightest mayors now have difficulty improving the conditions of the cities” (p. 250).

Overall, The New Black Politician is a useful contribution to studies in black leadership and urban politics. It is limited, however, by its sparse attention to the failure of black politicians, old and new, to come up with a vision and strategies to deal with the constraints that limit their capacities to address the most pressing problem—racialized poverty—confronting the black community in the post–Civil Rights era.