If race doesn't matter...

I was reading this AP article as linked on The Toledo Journal entitled, "Blacks Looking to Represent White Districts Create Mixed Feelings".

I recommend reading the whole article but one at the beginning and one at the end:

Having gained control over most predominantly Black political districts, an increasing number of African-Americans are campaigning to represent majority Whites districts.

“We are hoping that in the 21st Century, we are going to have a significant number of African-Americans; not one or two – that will be elected when the people who voted for them were majority-minority,” he (Harvard law professor and civil rights and political activist Charles Ogletree) says. “We see that with Barack Obama. We hope to see it with Harold Ford. We’ve seen it with Barbara Lee. It is a rarity. But if we’re ever going to have a real democracy, people have to be elected based on their talents and merits and race should not be a prohibitive factor.


It's something I've never understood, if the theory is that blacks are best represented by blacks or whites are best represented by whites, then that is all about race. If the theory is going to be the best candidate regardless of race should be elected then that should apply for all districts, no matter their racial make up.

Back on November 6, 1997, an article by Tom Troy in the Toledo Blade entitled, "WHITES LEAD SCHOOL BOARD" states:

Toledo Public Schools, with a student body that is 52 per cent minority, could be guided by an all-white school board when Wilma Brown resigns her seat to become a city council member.

Too many black candidates for the Toledo board of education and too few black voters contributed to the failure of black school board candidates in Tuesday's voting, according to candidates and local party leaders.

Of course this didn't happen since Larry Sykes was appointed, but that demonstrates the focus on race and suggests the implication that black voters mainly support black candidates.

Even this piece by Southern Poverty Law Center describes how minority votes can be "diluted":

The several white candidates split the white vote. The black candidate receives more votes than any of the white candidates, but she fails to win a majority of the votes, and a run-off election must be held between the black candidate and the second-place white candidate. In the run-off, most of the white voters vote for the white candidate, and the white candidate receives a majority of the vote, even if she receives no black votes. The white candidate wins the runoff election and takes office, even though she had fewer votes than the black candidate in the first election.

Of course this has happened, which again points to there those who make race a primary consideration. Race has been brought up many times in the Ohio Gubernatorial election and in this Toledo Journal link is also mentioned:

In Ohio, Republican J. Kenneth Blackwell and in Pennsylvania, Republican Lynn Swann are running for governor in the general election Nov. 7. Both are trying to duplicate the state-wide success of L. Douglas Wilder, the nation’s first and only elected African-American governor in 1989.

Lest it appears that it is mainly whites who prevent blacks from being elected, there have also been situations where whites have been not welcome to run in majority black districts. Some even now call this the Yassky Effect.

The first line of the New York Times article:

A group of black and Hispanic elected officials from Brooklyn are scheduled to meet this morning to devise strategies to keep a white candidate from winning a Congressional seat of historical significance in black politics.

No one could say Yassky was not qualified...but he lost:

A black city councilwoman won the racially charged primary for a Congressional seat in central Brooklyn yesterday, beating back a challenge from a white councilman to win a seat created nearly four decades ago to increase minority representation in Congress.

It appears pretty clear that we still have a ways to go before race doesn't matter...