When Mayor Cherelle Parker announced that she would stop setting aside a percentage of city contracts for minority and women-owned businesses, she showed that she’s probably never been bullied in her life.
I’m going to start this piece on the latest contretemps between Mayor Cherelle Parker and the traditionally marginalized communities that feel she hasn’t spoken out forcefully enough on their behalf with the following term: anticipatory obedience.
Now, anticipatory obedience is, simply put, obeying in advance. In his book “On Tyranny”, historian Timothy Snyder tells us that in authoritarian times like, well, now, people try to anticipate what those who wish to repress them will want in advance, and it gives them that thing.
Sometime today, Mayor Parker is expected to elaborate on her announcement that the city would no longer try to provide 35% of the city’s contracts to businesses owned by women or people of color…