White Congressman in a "Black" District

Steve Cohen has a problem. The two-tone Dem congressman was born without the required amount of melanin needed to serve the people in his district:

Steve Cohen, a two-term white congressman from a mostly black House district, faces a bruising Democratic primary next year and race again will likely be at the center of the campaign.

Willie Herenton, the first elected black mayor of Memphis, recently filed with the Federal Election Commission to run for Cohen's 9th District House seat. Cohen has shrugged off black challengers before, but none with the political savvy and combative style of the 6-foot-6 mayor - a former Golden Gloves boxer who doesn't shrink easily from a fight.

Now mayor longer than any predecessor, Herenton, 69, first won office in 1992 by beating a popular white incumbent by 142 votes in one of the closest mayoral elections in Memphis history. He has faced little serious re-election opposition since and is now in his fifth four-year term.

Cohen, 60, is one of just two white members of Congress representing predominantly black districts and the only one to follow an African-American into office. He is the first white congressman from Memphis since 1974 and the only Jewish member of Tennessee's congressional delegation.

Voters in the August 2010 Democratic primary will face a sensitive question that has dogged Cohen since his first House election in 2006: Should Tennessee's only majority black district have a black representative in Washington?

"I think all along, Steve Cohen has known that's his vulnerability," said political scientist Marcus Pohlmann at Rhodes College of Memphis. "It's not so much that he's disliked because he's white, but he's running in a district that was created to elect an African-American."

So much for judging people by the "content of their character". It doesn't sound like it's the white man that's blocking Dr. Martin Luther King's vision.

I remember swhile back when Cohen asked to join the Congressional Black Caucus because he served so many black people in his district and wanted to be on top of issues important to them.

He was denied. Can't have a cracker in the Black Caucus.

There's still racism in this country, but it's not coming from the people you might think it is.