The last two times we’ve taken up the issue of people with power in Louisville we’ve received some heat for the chromosome configuration of our lists. Our January 2005, my feature on where a new generation of civic leaders might emerge from (“Passing on the Power”) spotlighted mainly businessmen in their 30s and 40s who have the personal wealth to help finance big civic projects. And our 50 most-powerful Louisvillians survey in last month’s issue (“Pictures of Power”) presented a list top-heavy with predominantly middle-aged white males — the old boys network, so to speak.
This does not sit well with some of our readers, and they’ve let us know about it in very candid language through phone calls and e-mails. Not surprisingly, most of the complaints have come from women, who believe that our city is no longer run by a men’s club — or at least should not be. They are, not surprisingly, offended when Louisville Magazine draws a picture that shows little progress toward an equal sharing with women and minorities of control over our city’s levers of power.
Comments such as these compel me to confront, as an editor, the role our magazine — and the entire media — plays in projecting power-wielders. Is it our duty to reflect the current state of affairs as realistically and accurately as possible? Or should we be framing questions in different ways to widen the field of power players?
In simple terms, should we seek to mirror a story such as this or should we focus on it through an adjustable lens?
We’ve held up the mirror the past two Januarys and the image is undeniable: Although a generation of women has participated more fully in the professions and the business world, and African-Americans and other minorities have made some inroads to power, by far the most influence remains in the hands of white men. If we listen to those in Louisville attuned to the issue, this is reality.
Our powerful-people survey, the results of which were compiled into the top-50 most powerful people published last month, was based on the opinions of alumni of the Leadership Louisville program (its typical yearly “class” is 60 percent male and 40 percent female), as well as those of members of the Society of Professional Journalists. They listed, in order, their picks for the 10 most “powerful or influential” Louisvillians. We added up the results and presented their picks. The thinking was that these folks make it their business to know who pull the strings in this town.
What all of those Y chromosomes on the list — 46 of the 50 are male and 40 are white male — say about our culture and community is a large question. One obvious explanation is that we haven’t come as far down the road to equality as we’d like. In fact, some might argue that progress is at a standstill. Look at the leadership in Washington and Frankfort. How many women and minorities do you see gaining access in those corridors of power? And they’ve lost ground, it seems, on the ultra-powerful U.S. Supreme Court with the retirement of Sandra Day O’Connor and (as appeared certain as we went to press) the confirmation of Samuel Alito.
We’ve yielded control of our government and our society to captains of industry and players on Wall Street. These are the biggest white male bastions of all. Meanwhile, the culture of fear that drives voters today — fear of terrorists, of losing jobs, of inadequate health-care plans — cramps the climate for change. Opportunities for new kinds of leadership are restricted as we retreat to the mythology of the frontier man. Only strong men of action can retain for us our primacy over a threatening world.
I’m not the first to point out this retrenchment. We’ve backed ourselves into an era of limits while our expectations, formed during expansive times in the 1960s and ’70s, are for influence to be distributed more equally and more quickly.
That said, we do not always hold up a mirror at Louisville Magazine. And when we do, we can’t claim that it’s always with the best reflecting glass. We also search for new lenses to view an issue.
There may be other ways to look at how power is exercised in Louisville and who wields it. Perhaps we should be searching in new places for people of influence. Or perhaps we should revise our definitions of power itself and, while we’re at it, open up to the possibility of new leadership.
That’s something the editors here will ponder for future coverage — and, one might wish, find that others in the city are pondering as well.
Bruce Allar