Paul Harris, Observer (UK)
- Cory Booker’s message was clear. Unveiling a plaque to commemorate deadly race riots in his city 41 years ago, the young black Mayor of Newark, New Jersey, was thinking of the future as much as the past. Though 26 people died in the troubles and the city turned into a byword for racial tensions and crime, Booker was determined not to make the event about America’s past racism and segregation.
‘I am of a different generation,’ he told a crowd of onlookers in the stifling heat of a Newark summer’s day. ‘I have never in my life seen a sign, but in a museum, that says “Whites only”. I am from a generation that came about in a different era.’
Such honest words, wilfully breaking free from the Sixties civil rights struggle, would once have been unthinkable from a leading black politician, especially when speaking to a mostly black audience. But now, as Barack Obama runs to be America’s first black President, a new cadre of so-called ‘post-racial’ black politicians have moved to the fore. They are changing the face of black American politics.
