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Obama’s Success Ends `I Can’t’ Attitude for Blacks in Politics

Hans Nichols, Bloomberg

- Terry Fields, a black Florida legislator with dreams of holding statewide office, said he’s about where Barack Obama was six years ago. Fields has one advantage.

Obama “has removed the `I can’t’ attitude” among blacks in American politics, said Fields, 46, who is planning to run for attorney general of Florida.

Like other young black politicians, Fields is convinced that Obama’s nomination as the Democratic presidential candidate has dismantled a historic barrier that has prevented all but a handful of African-Americans from winning outside urban areas and certain congressional districts.

The Illinois senator’s 31 primary and caucus victories show that “a candidate, if he or she is good enough, can be taken seriously regardless of race,” said Artur Davis, a black congressman from Alabama. “That’s why people like me can think about running for governor of Alabama now.”

Black politicians have made great strides in winning congressional races since the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Today there are 43 blacks in Congress. Forty years ago, there were seven.

That growth has been mirrored in legislatures throughout the U.S. There are 623 state legislators today, up from 168 in 1970, an almost fourfold increase, according to the National Black Caucus of State Legislators.

One Since Wilder

There’s been little progress, though, in statewide races, where candidates need to appeal beyond an urban base or a “majority-minority” congressional seat, drawn to concentrate black voters in a single district. Since Douglas Wilder of Virginia became the first elected black governor in 1989, only one has followed: Deval Patrick of Massachusetts, in 2006. Only three blacks, including Obama, have been elected to the U.S. Senate in the last 40 years.

Some black lawmakers are doubtful Obama’s nomination will reverse that trend. They see his victory as a psychological milestone, like when British runner Roger Bannister broke the 4-minute mile, said Eric Kearney, an Ohio state senator.

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