Whites more comfortable voting for blacks

WASHINGTON, Oct. 14 (UPI) -- White U.S. residents are becoming increasingly comfortable with blacks representing them in political offices, analysts say.

While the candidacy of Democratic U.S. presidential nominee Barack Obama, a black U.S. senator from Illinois, has focused attention on the topic, about 200 black politicians have won offices once held by whites in legislatures and city halls across the country in the last 10 years, The New York Times reported Tuesday.

The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a Washington research group, says about 30 percent of the nation's current 622 black state legislators represent predominantly white districts, up from about 16 percent in 2001.

The newspaper says political scientists are also pointing to an increase in the number of black mayors who represent predominantly white cities such Asheville, N.C., and Columbus, Ohio. One study claims 40 percent of all Americans have lived in or near cities that have elected black mayors or in states with black governors.

"There's a fair amount of experience out there among white voters now, and that has lessened the fears about black candidates," Zoltan Hajnal, a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego, told The Times.