Fresh chance, same old faces

With state Representative Shirley Owens-Hicks giving up the Mattapan-based House seat she has held for 20 years, it seemed like a golden opportunity for a bright new light to join the ranks of Boston's young black leaders alongside Linda Dorcena Forry, who landed the neighboring House seat last year. But the race so far looks less like a battle for future black leadership than a gathering of its past.

Already getting attention was the first candidate out of the box, William Celester, the former Boston police commander who went on to run the Newark police force in New Jersey before finding himself on the other side of the law and in federal prison in the 1990s on corruption charges. Some have wondered whether the 63-year-old former felon is the best the community can do.

Another House hopeful has jumped into the race, but people casting their gaze for a young minority leader of tomorrow will have to keep looking. Joining Celester in the Sixth Suffolk District race is 69-year-old Willie Mae Allen, a veteran member of the Democratic State Committee and onetime City Hall aide during the Flynn administration. Wayne Wilson, a 41-year-old white Roslindale resident, also plans to run, but his odds would appear long in a district where minority voters make up 84 percent of the voting-age population.

''People have a right to run," says former city councilor Bruce Bolling of the current crop of candidates. ''But I do think it's a sad statement that you're not seeing young, progressive people of color who can speak to a new generation of electoral politics and bring their issues and their particular flavor to the electoral arena."

''All these geezers running for office make the point of just how unconnected our young people are from the process," says Horace Small, with the Union of Minority Neighborhoods. ''At some point this is going to come back and bite us."

Small says his organization takes ''as much responsibility as anybody, since our gig is to train people to take responsibility and get involved." During the Democratic National Convention in Boston two summers ago, Small helped organize a training session on the nuts and bolts of running for office. Despite efforts to target young minorities in the area, ''we didn't get the turnout," he says, lamenting that there were just 12 minority group members out of the 160 people who took part.

''My generation, I think, really doesn't understand the power of political organizing," says George Greenidge, executive director of the National Black College Alliance, a Boston-based organization founded in 1989 to promote greater involvement of educated black professionals in community and civic life.

Bolling says there are many more private-sector opportunities for young, college-educated minorities today, eclipsing the allure that politics once held in the community. But that doesn't change the fact that Boston's minority community, perhaps now more than ever, should be aggressively cultivating young people to seek leadership roles in a city where minorities make up more than half the population.

Juan Martinez, executive director of MassVOTE, a statewide group working to increase voter participation in minority communities, points to last year's race for the adjacent seat vacated by former House speaker Tom Finneran, a contest that Forry won after a spirited campaign that drew several bright, young candidates. ''Why can't it be like for every open seat?" he asks of the looming contest in the Sixth Suffolk.

It's a question the city's black community should be asking itself long and hard.

Michael Jonas can be reached at jonas@globe.com.