Why The New Black Politicians Are Successful

By Kleinheider Posted on October 13, 2008 at 10:16 am

Mark Mays breaks it down:

1) They aren’t the same old politicians. Obama, Deval Patrick, Harold Ford Jr., Moseley Braun, these men and women don’t come from the old Civil Rights movement era. They aren’t ministers, they’re lawyers. They don’t have the baggage of being “rabble rousers” and labeling them as troublemakers doesn’t stick, no matter how hard you try. Older White voters can be comfortable with them. They’ve cultivated a “mainstream” image.

2) Attitudes have changed. Yep, somewhere out there there’s a chart that shows how much less racist a society we live in today than we lived in 20 years ago. While the current campaign proves that old attitudes die hard, they are diminishing at least. Outright introduction of racial issues, as was seen at the end of the Gantt/Helms contest, would likely be frowned upon. These days you have to dance around the issue.

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