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In his memorial speech, Booker outlined a post-racial future for black Americans and his constant theme was to move on from the civil rights era. 'We do not want these stories or these memories to overcome us and undermine us; to trap us in our history,' he said.
That echoes the themes of Obama, who only openly addressed the issue of race when his pastor, the Rev Jeremiah Wright, became a damaging campaign issue after making comments including blaming America for the 11 September attacks and claiming the government had secretly invented HIV 'as a means of genocide against people of colour'.
Indeed, Obama has been frequently at pains to call on black Americans to take responsibility for their lives. He has spoken at black churches and aggressively pushed the need for individual blacks, especially young fathers, to look after their families better. That theme has earned the ire of older figures such as Jackson, whose fury at Obama recently spilled out when a microphone in a TV studio picked up Jackson admitting he wanted to '... cut his nuts out'.
The new generation of black politicians has forged on regardless and, to some extent, they have succeeded in removing race from their campaigns. When Paterson replaced Eliot Spitzer as New York's governor, much was made of the fact Paterson was blind. His race was rarely mentioned. Patrick and Franklin's paths to power unfolded in similar ways, with race playing little overt role.
In many ways, these politicians reflect the emergence of a black middle class that has moved to the same suburbs as their white counterparts and works in the same professional jobs. A recent study for Radio One, a black broadcasting company, found huge generational discrepancies among black Americans. It found younger blacks in their thirties and forties were twice as likely to say society focused too much on black oppression as their parents' generation. They were also markedly more optimistic about the future.