"What about Kentucky?"

What about Kentucky?
By Maurice Sweeney

With the country and the world caught up in Obamamania, it made me stop and wonder what about Kentucky? With no statewide elected minority officials, and with President Obama losing in the state's primary and general elections, the question being asked is why Kentucky would be so out of step with the nation and with some other similar rural-dominated states.

During the presidential election, there were national and state polls that indicated race was, or would be, a determining factor -- polls confirming for the Obama staff that it would be a waste of time and resources to even campaign in Kentucky.

When I look at many of our elected officials, one thing is clear: Kentuckians too often vote without asking themselves (1) who has the best qualifications or (2) what is the content of the candidates' character. It's not surprising that race would play a role, since Kentucky has numerous counties with few or no black families, which can create a vacuum in which there's little or no understanding.

Just 30 years ago, as an employee of the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights, I personally witnessed a cross burning in Glasgow, a shot-up home owned by blacks in a Louisville neighborhood, the shooting of a black man in Paducah for having a white girlfriend, a segregated restaurant/pool hall in Lancaster and a segregated roller rink in Northern Kentucky.

So what about Kentucky -- are we being left behind? Why have so few minorities tried to run for state office? Where is the leadership? Should we blame the widely held view that the state would not support a qualified African American due to race?

Are Kentuckians racist, afraid or ignorant of the fact that ideas for better government come in all shapes and shades?

The ignorant can be educated. The fear of change can be eased, if we understand that either you dictate change or change will be dictated to you. But racism is something Kentuckians have been unwilling to recognize or discuss as a real issue, even though it's obvious that we must.

It amuses me to see how astonished Americans are that Obama is a centrist, that he believes in better government not bigger government, or that he has a moral center that's revealed by his passion to serve and his love of his family -- qualities we all can identify with. There are many African Americans in Kentucky who have said similar things, or demonstrated these traits, but have gone unnoticed, because too many Kentuckians are focused on worn-out, dated stereotypes.

I last had a conversation about a black person running for a statewide office a few years ago, with a past U.S. congressman and an influential member of the press who dismissed such an idea with laughter and disbelief.

Other states seem to have real competition for leadership, but Kentucky seems to operate on some type of right of succession, in which you must ask the master for permission to participate and give of your talent. If Obama had asked for permission to run -- whether from the old civil rights guard or the pollsters or the legislative elite -- he never would have been elected to lead the nation.

Watching the inaugural, thinking back some 47 years, picture a 7-year-old who had lost a father to cancer being taken on a family outing to Lexington's Joyland amusement park. Traveling up U.S. 60 before there was an I-65, and when the tallest feature on the Lexington skyline was the peak of the biggest roller coaster the child had ever seen, we were turned away because blacks could only go to Joyland twice a year. And that was not the day.

We are told that Kentucky has one of the five most corrupt state governments, yet no matter how ineffective and inept our legislators are, seldom do the incumbents have people running against them.

Maurice Sweeney is a businessman and civic activist who lives in Louisville. He is one of The Courier-Journal's Point Taken bloggers.