In honor of Martin Luther King, Jr's birthday, USA Today ran a half-page article highlighting the fact that there is currently not a single black or hispanic governor or senator. CNN's Jeff Greenfield followed on Tuesday night with the following:

1982, Tom Bradley running for governor of California. Ahead in the polls on election day, loses. 1989, Doug Wilder, big lead in the polls in Virginia. You know this barely squeaks by. A year later, Harvey Ganton, North Carolina, five, six points ahead of Jesse Helms in the polls, loses by five points.

What this seems to suggest is that there still is, or least those 10 years ago, a chunk of white voters who simply will not acknowledge that they don't intend to vote for the black candidates. Still true?

While it is certainly true that some whites will never vote for a black candidate, I think that the same can be said about just about any race. There are white racists. There are black racists.

Greenfield uses polls in an effort to illustrate racism. I think that is a big mistake, because there is a much simpler explanation: the polls were inaccurate. Each of illustrations occurred more than five years ago. Just over 1 year ago, every single poll but one had George W. Bush leading in the days before the election. Al Gore ended up winning the popular vote handily. Occam's Razor, Jeff. Look it up.

If blacks are having a hard time winning a statewide election, I like John J. Miller of the National Review's explanation. Miller posits that the creation gerrymandered districts to maximize the influence of a specific racial group has the effect of promoting politicians on the extremes.

Kiely makes it seem that if there were only more gerrymandering, there would be a better "farm team" of minority officeholders who might then advance as senators and governors. But this is exactly wrong. What gerrymandering has done is create a generation of Bobby Rushes and Maxine Waters � radical-left politicians who have no ability or even desire to build multiracial voting coalitions that can succeed at the statewide level.

And that's the most important � and unstated � reason why there weren't any black or Hispanic faces illustrating yesterday's cover story in USA Today.