Louisiana, Virginia, Massachusetts, New York, and Maryland: only five US states have ever had a Black governor.
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California has never had a female governor.
Kansas, not exactly known for being progressive, (though it is politically weirder than it seems) has had 3.
California will be correcting that oversight this fall.
Since achieving statehood, Hawaii has had nine governors, and of these, three were Asian, one was Native Hawaiian, and one was a woman.
I'm not sure I follow the point being made here by posting this context-free fact. 5 states have had a black governor. And?
There have been, ever, 5 or maybe 6 African-American State Governors (says the linked post). There have been in total maybe 2500-3000 gubernatorial terms in the history of the US, so that is 0.25% of the total. The % of the US population that is African-American is something like ~12% - so the point I took from this fact is that State Governors have been shockingly unrepresentative of the US population as a whole!
I post lots of context-free facts. What about this particular one rankles I wonder? And it's "Black governor".
Jason, you're right and it was just a typing fast error. My bad. Should we treat the US as a monolith and all states are exactly the same, so that Montana, with an African American population of .5% should have had an African American governor?
I think every US state should be required to have a Black governor.
Ok. I can see where this is going. Sorry for trying to create an honest discussion. Your response is why the good guys, with the good intentions, lose. And look at what we have now. Anyway, long time patron and fan of kottke.org. Thank you for what you do.
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