Mayor Bill de Blasio should get a break.
In the latest Siena poll on race, 48 percent of New Yorkers said the racial climate in the city was bad compared with 30 percent in the last days of the Bloomberg administration.
The mayor has made healing racial divisions a top priority with his effort to limit stop-and-frisk in a bid to improve strained relations between minority communities and the police.
Despite his agenda, de Blasio has been caught in the backdraft from the public’s dismay over the Staten Island grand jury decision not to indict the white detective in the chokehold death of Eric Garner. Two-thirds of New Yorkers, who are not inclined to think in lockstep, believe the officer should have been indicted, according to the poll.
But unlike Ferguson, Mo., New York City has remained relatively calm during the protests against the Garner jury. De Blasio infuriated the PBA when he spoke in Staten Island about how he worries that his 17-year-old interracial son Dante may have a confrontation with police someday. But many New Yorkers appreciated his candor, which may have helped prevent the widespread outrage from erupting in violence.
The mayor has walked a fine line in supporting both black New Yorkers and the NYPD in the midst of the inflamed national debate on race and cops. In Queens, immigrants have protested the Garner case, defining race in the country’s most ethnically diverse borough.
This is a tough balancing act for de Blasio and he should be given credit for trying to reach a fair accounting. His approval ratings have held steady but are dramatically higher among black New Yorkers than white New Yorkers.
Nevertheless, 52 percent of New Yorkers — both black and white — agree the city is headed in the wrong direction, the poll found.
Events largely beyond de Blasio’s control are reshaping New Yorkers’ views of where we stand on race and posing a serious challenge for the mayor, who has made some missteps in his quest to heal the city’s racial rift. He has let civil rights activist Al Sharpton take the lead at some post-Garner events rather than keeping command of the conversation himself.
But it’s far too early to have a referendum on de Blasio’s record on race in the city. He’s just getting started on his program for racial reform and needs the rest of his term to carry it out.
