Report: Despite Increase in Black Voting, Black Elected Officials Still Woefully Underrepresented

With Selma March This Weekend, Public Policies that Support Blacks are also Still Low

By Hazel Trice Edney

Spencer Overton, president, Joint Center

Khalila Brown-Dean, political scientist

Christina Rivers, political scientist

Zoltan Hajnal, political scientist

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - A new report on race and voting in America 50 years after the Voting Rights Act says despite massive increases in voting by African-Americans since 1965 and despite the growth in Black elected representatives, the number of Blacks and people of color in elected offices remains woefully underrepresented.

“Since 1965, the number of elected officials of color has grown enormously.  Over this period, African Americans went from holding fewer than 1,000 elected offices nationwide [to] over 10,000,” says the report released this week by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.

But, then the report drops the other foot: “Based on the most recent data, African Americans are 12.5% of the citizen voting age population, but they make up a smaller share of the U.S. House (10%), state legislatures (8.5%), city councils (5.7%), and the U.S. Senate (2%).”

The report, titled “50 Years of the Voting Rights Act, the State of Race in Politics”, was released March 3, four days before the commemoration of the 50^th Anniversary of the “Bloody Sunday” march for voting rights from Selma to Montgomery, Ala.

Thousands are expected to march in unity and President Obama is scheduled to speak in commemoration of that day of violence on the Edmund Pettus Bridge when members of the Student Non-Violence Coordinating Committee were viciously attacked and beaten by Alabama State Troopers. This was the turning point in the fight for voting rights. Largely because of that nationally televised violence and the violent deaths of activists Jimmy Lee Jackson, Viola Liuzzo, and James Reeb in by racists in Selma, President Lyndon B. Johnson implored Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act, which he signed into law on Aug. 6, 1965.

Still, nearly 50 years later, the Joint Center’s report also states that African-Americans remain at the rock bottom among racial minorities who have received fair and applicable public policies in America, including economic policies.

“Based on available data from 1972 to 2010, blacks were the least advantaged group in America in terms of policy outcomes.  Blacks were policy winners only 31.9% of the time, compared with 37.6% for whites.  This difference seems small, but it is ten times larger than the 0.5 point difference between high- and low-income earners,” the report states.

The low number of Black elected officials is not for the lack of trying. “Race is the most significant factor in urban local elections,” the report states.

“In urban local elections, race is a more decisive factor than income, education, political ideology, religion, sexuality, age, gender, and political ideology. The 38 point racial gap exceeds even the 33 point gap between Democratic and Republican voters,” the report states.

The research for the study and report was conducted by prominent political scientists Khalilah Brown-Dean of Quinnipiac University; Zoltan Hajnal of the University of California at San Diego; Christina Rivers of DePaul University, and Ismail White of George Washington University.

“We have elected an African American president, but studies have shown that some government officials are less likely to respond to inquiries from citizens with seemingly black or Latino names,” writes Joint Center President Spencer Overton in an introduction to the report. “How much progress have we made since 1965?  How much more work is there to do? These are contested questions, subject to ideology and opinion,” Overton writes.

Other revelations in the report:

• The black/white racial gap in voter turnout has decreased dramatically since 1965 in presidential elections.  Turnout among black Southerners exceeded that of their white counterparts in four of the twelve presidential elections since 1965, and nationwide black turnout clearly exceeded white turnout in presidential elections in 2012 and perhaps in 2008.

• Local election turnout is lower and possibly less diverse.  Presidential general election turnout is generally 60% of the voting-age population, but local election turnout averages 27% and in some cases is less than 10%.  As overall turnout declines in local elections, the electorate may become less representative of the racial diversity of the community as a whole.

• Latino and Asian American turnout increased but remains low. Turnout rates among both Asian Americans and Hispanic Americans in presidential elections remain 10 to 15 percentage points below black Americans and 15 to 20 points below white Americans.

• Party politics is increasingly polarized by race.  Since 1960, the party identification and partisan voting patterns of blacks and whites have become sharply divided

• Latinos make up 11% of the citizen voting age population, but they are a smaller share of the U.S. House (7%), state legislatures (5%), the U.S. Senate (4%), and city councils (3.3%).  Asian Americans are 3.8% of the citizen voting age population but a smaller share of the U.S. House (2%), state legislatures (2%), the U.S. Senate (1%), and city councils (0.4%).

• Elected Latinos have grown from a small number of offices to over 6,000, and Asian Americans from under a hundred documented cases to almost 1,000.

Concluding his introductory letter, Overton said the questions dealt with in the report are also important because they are “at the core of many ongoing debates about voting rights in the U.S. Supreme Court and Congress, as well as in many states, counties, and municipalities.”

 

 

March 1, 2015

Zimmerman Escapes Again: Feds Won’t File Charges Against Him for Trayvon Martin’s Death

 

George Zimmerman, left, will not face federal civil rights charges in the killing of Trayvon Martin.

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from NorthStarNewsToday.com

WASHINGTON -- On one hand was Julian Bond, a long-time civil rights activist, founding member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and former chair of the NAACP.

He was accompanied by Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, also a long-time civil rights activist and former SNCC member who also was also a member of the famous Mississippi Freedom Summer and worked with slain civil rights icon Medgar Evers.

On the other were members of the new and future generation of leaders -- Howard University Student Association President Leighton Watson and Howard University Student Association Vice President Anthony Driver.

As activists from two generations gathered for a discussion on racial profiling in America duriing Black History Month at Howard University, the conversation quickly turned to how the generations can learn from and work with each other to address the human rights issues of the day.

Norton said she was pleased to see the recent protests led by young people against the police-related deaths of unarmed black men in Ferguson, Mo., and New York City.

"I have been so elated by seeing young people get out in the streets, I don't know what to do,” she said.

Still, she felt the marches and demonstrations , while important and necessary, lacked focus and a clear direction.

"Back in the days of the Woolworth sit-ins, the demands were clear,” she said.  No one needed to articulate demands.

Today, the demands aren't clear. I haven't heard any demands articulated. We hear hands up, don't shoot and Black lives matter, but in fact, much of America may think that what people are really concerned about is black men getting shot in the streets.  “That does occur considerably more often than white men, but that's not what brought people of every color out.  “It's racial profiling that did it."

In response, Watson said it would help his generation to have guidance from the older generation in how young people today should lead and organize.

"I think that part of thedisconnect is that you have young people who have the enthusiasm and the energy to be out in the streets,” Watson said.  “There are ideas floating around,  "but without communication with the people that have experience, have ideas, and know how the system works, that can tell us that these are viable ideas or this is what worked for us, it's frustrating.

It's frustrating because (we) have all of these solutions and ideas, but it's hard not knowing if they can even work. So, if the older generation is sitting on ideas that can change the circumstances, then I would think that there needs to be communication, so that the young people can implement these."

Bond said he thought it was important for the new generation to chart its own course without waiting to hear from their elders.

"I think people in my generation are a little reluctant to say to these young people, ‘Why don't you do this?  How about you do that’

“I'm not willing to say that, because I think you know what the problems are. You know what the solutions are, and I'm sure we will be glad to help, but don't depend on us to tell you what to do.  “Just go out and do it."

Driver said he believes in a part of the disconnect between the two generations.

He said, "After being in Ferguson and in Chicago, I feel like the disconnect is young people feeling as though the older generation comes in to (assume control of) their movements, or to show face and take credit for their movements." 

March 2, 2015

Mississippi Judge Delivers Epic Sentencing Speech to 3 White Racist Killers

- See more at: http://www.afro.com/black-mississippi-judge-delivers-epic-sentencing-speech-to-3-white-racist-killers/?utm_source=AFRO+Saturday+News+Wrap-up+E-Blast%2C+February+28%2C+2015&utm_campaign=sat+eblast&utm_medium=email#sthash.7y5CaD8O.dpuf