I like Loren Taylor, even though he won’t talk to me. He’d make a decent mayor. Not a great one, though, because he has a problem. Taylor, who’s Black, can’t embrace the crazier segment of the Black Left in Oakland, which he knows is insatiably stupid. At the same time, he can’t risk being labeled an Uncle Tom by the likes of Pamela Price and Cat Brooks. So he’s caught in the middle, a classic cat on a hot tin roof. At any turn, he’s likely to get burned.
Loren has the smarts to recognize far left wokes as morons who have no idea how to solve Oakland’s many problems. He knows they’re political opportunists, who take advantage of voters’ idealism and ignorance. He fully understands the danger and vulgarity of a Cat Brooks when she demands police defunding, of a Carroll Fife when she reduces every issue to skin color, of a Pamela Price when she endangers public safety. Loren Taylor is a lot more centrist, personally, than people realize. He knows that anti-White, anti-Asian and anti-police biases abound in the Black activist community. But because of the sensitivity of the race and crime issues in Oakland, he can’t come out and say so.
If he did, the woke left, financed by SEIU money, would dig up an opposition candidate whom they could present as the true progressive. (I don’t know who that person could be. I know who it won’t be: Seneca Scott.) There would be a primary, of course, and the union candidate would smear Loren as an Oreo cookie, brown on the outside but white inside. They’d paint him as hostile to civil rights and racial equity. The local media would eat this up and amplify it. The contest would be contentious, mutually damaging and confusing to many voters. Loren would see his true beliefs, whatever they are, twisted and misinterpreted. But the truth is, if it happens this way, Loren will have brought his troubles upon himself. He’s trying to play a double game.
Who is the real Loren Taylor? We don’t really know. Which is why I say, Just come out and be who you are, Loren. You’ve been dancing around these race and crime issues for years. You’re afraid of losing progressive votes, especially Black ones, but you can’t lower yourself to the duplicity of embracing the zaniest far-left ideas. I respect that in you. What I don’t understand is why you feel you have to conceal your real thoughts because Cat Brooks, Pamela Price and Carroll Fife, three Black girls, have you scared shitless.
Loren won’t talk to me because I dare to criticize certain behaviors and mindsets that plague the Black community. Loren himself knows that I’m a truth teller. Loren knows that the truth must be spoken, if it is not to be mugged by a gang of lies. Loren knows that many aspects of Black life cry out to be chastised. But he also knows that some people in his circle hate for any aspect of Black life to be disparaged. It is those people whom he listens to. He could separate himself from them, speak truth, support other truth tellers and establish for himself a truly dignified, intelligent political identity, but he’s afraid. That is his weakness, his fear of speaking truth to power. If I could, I would instill a life-changing infusion of courage in Loren Taylor, but alas, only Loren Taylor can do that.
Steve Heimoff