Back in early October, Kansas City&#x2019;s second black mayor helped appoint the city&#x2019;s first black police chief.</p><p>Discussing that decision days later with City Council colleagues, Mayor Sly James made a good point about incoming Chief Darryl Fort&#xE9;.</p><p>&#x201C;It&#x2019;s very important for the first black chief of this city not to be perceived as a chief for the black parts of Kansas City,&#x201D; James said. Indeed, Fort&#xE9; and his department must deal with the violent crime that affects too much of this entire city.</p><p>James also contended Kansas City had to more aggressively deal with its racial divide, including any thought that black officials were taking over all the powerful positions in town.</p><p>&#x201C;All these nonsensical things that come up are frankly laughable,&#x201D; James told the council.</p><p>Afterward I asked James for a few added comments because &#x2014; unlike the election of Mayor Emanuel Cleaver in 1991 &#x2014; the fact that James is black hadn&#x2019;t figured as prominently in his bid for office in 2011. Why was he bringing it up more publicly now?</p><p>&#x201C;Because there&#x2019;s racism,&#x201D; he said bluntly, adding, &#x201C;Because we&#x2019;re still stuck in stupid,&#x201D; looking at skin color and not at what people are capable of accomplishing. &#x201C;I did not run to be the black mayor&#x201D; of Kansas City. &#x201C;I ran to be mayor.&#x201D;</p><p>Pressed on how to deal with the racial divide, James said, &#x201C;Contact is the problem. Troost is a barrier to contact.&#x201D; The more contact people have with others of different races, the easier it is to do good stuff for the city, the mayor said.</p><p>He said his goal is to make Kansas City &#x201C;as unified and as color-neutral as possible.&#x201D;</p><p>As Martin Luther King Jr. Day approaches, it&#x2019;s worth noting that James&#x2019; reflections were pretty much dead-on in describing general problems and solutions regarding racial matters in Kansas City. But it&#x2019;s more sobering to realize that truly solving these racial issues is still a huge challenge.</p><p>Here&#x2019;s one fact many people don&#x2019;t realize: Kansas City is becoming whiter these days.</p><p>The number of black residents fell by 339 between the 2000 and 2010 census, even while the whole city&#x2019;s population went up by 18,000 people. The city&#x2019;s black population dropped from 31.2 percent to 29.9 percent in that decade, as black-majority neighborhoods south of the river lost residents to Raytown, Grandview and Johnson County. Meanwhile, the Northland&#x2019;s predominantly white neighborhoods gained thousands of white residents.</p><p>It&#x2019;s extremely disappointing that the passage of time hasn&#x2019;t significantly changed some of the stereotypes that have existed the last quarter-century I&#x2019;ve written about the city.</p><p>When he took office in 1991, Cleaver heard some of the same racially charged notions that James does today: Blacks want something they haven&#x2019;t earned such as access to city contracts and political power; whites want to hang on to power they don&#x2019;t deserve in a fast-changing city.</p><p>In the recent battle over redistricting, the racial makeup of council districts came up repeatedly at public hearings. Creating two black-majority districts was broadly accepted. But some people squawked about any large increase of minority populations in the four other districts.</p><p>And just days ago, a group that promotes issues of importance to African-Americans unveiled a new sales tax increase plan that would create money to deal with urban core problems. The criticism on talk-radio was blistering. True, the idea is sketchy right now. Still, as could be expected, many callers offered familiar bromides, such as telling blacks to pull themselves up by their bootstraps before going to taxpayers for help.</p><p>Hmm, wish all these callers could have convinced the City Council to tell large, white-run corporations to do the same thing and not look for hundreds of millions in tax incentives for their private projects in the past few decades. <span class="italic">But I digress.</span></p><p>Involving new people to look at old problems can help move things forward.</p><p>One of Mayor James&#x2019; contributions so far has been appointing more black and Hispanic residents to key city commissions, along with some younger white residents as well. </p><p>James also will help knock down more racial barriers by doing exactly what he&#x2019;s promised: being the mayor for all of Kansas City.