Can We All Get Along?

Racial and Ethnic Minorities in American Politics

Paula McClain, Jessica Carew

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780429975165
• Edition: 7
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In a nation built by immigrants and bedeviled by the history and legacy of slavery and discrimination, how do we, as Americans, reconcile a commitment to equality and freedom with persistent inequality and discrimination? And what can we do about it? This widely acclaimed text by Paula D. McClain, with new coauthor Jessica D. Johnson Carew, provides a comprehensive and accessible overview of the historical and contemporary political experience of the major groups-African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, and American Indians-in the United States. It explores the similarities and differences in these groups' representation and participation in law, politics, and policymaking, discusses the enduring issues and concerns that they face, and examines intra- and inter-group competition and coalition-building in the face of enduring conflict and inequality. The seventh edition has been thoroughly revised and updated to include coverage of President Barack Obama's second term, the 2016 election, police brutality and Black Lives Matter, and the Dakota Access Pipeline protest movement. With a brand-new chapter on the intersections of race and gender, Can We All Get Along? remains unparalleled in its comparative coverage of the current landscape of minority politics in the United States.

CHAPTER 1

America’s Dilemmas

After spending five years questioning whether President Barack Obama was born in the United States, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump conceded in 2016 that President Obama was indeed born in the United States (Haberman and Rapperport 2016).

The “birther conspiracy” movement began early on, during the 2008 presidential election, when people began asking to see verification of President Obama’s birth in the state of Hawaii. The idea channeled into more of a movement when Donald Trump began raising the issue again, beginning in March 2011 (Krieg 2016). The issue gained more traction as it was advanced by Trump as a means to question President Obama’s legitimacy as president. For example, in August 2012, Trump took to Twitter to state that, “An extremely credible source has called my office and told me that Barack Obama’s birth certificate is a fraud” (Trump 2014). The questioning of President Obama’s place of birth is one of the most salient examples of how explicitly racist assumptions have been used as a means to delegitimize the standing of a high-ranking person in the United States.

— DONALD TRUMP’S BIRTHER CAMPAIGN 2011-2016

On April 29, 1992, rioting erupted in Los Angeles after the announcement that a predominantly white jury in a suburban municipality had acquitted police officers who had been videotaped beating black motorist Rodney King. These activities were widely reported as black reactions to an obvious injustice perpetrated by whites against blacks. Indeed, Americans are used to interpreting political and social relations in white-versus-black terms. The facts are more complex. The brunt of property crimes in Los Angeles due to the riots was borne by Korean retailers; the majority of those arrested during the civil disorders was Hispanic (Morrison and Lowry 1994). As the United States proceeds through the twenty-first century, the variety and identity of the actors are changing, but racial and ethnic conflict is an old story.

In his Democracy in America, published in 1835, Alexis de Tocqueville, an early French visitor to the republic, noted that the treatment and situation of blacks in the United States contradicted the American passion for democracy. He saw slavery and the denial of constitutional rights and protection to blacks as the principal threats to the US democratic system: “If there ever are great revolutions there [in America], they will be caused by the presence of the blacks upon American soil.… It will not be the equality of social conditions but rather their inequality which may give rise thereto” (de Tocqueville 1835 [original], Mayer and Lerner 1966:614). This same disparate treatment was noted more than a century later by sociologist Gunnar Myrdal, who published the first comprehensive scholarly examination of the oppression of blacks in the United States, An American Dilemma (1944). Myrdal argues that the contradiction within American society between an allegedly strong commitment to democratic values on the one hand and the presence of racial oppression on the other creates a moral dilemma for white Americans and is the root of the US race relations problems.

Although many doubt that Myrdal’s argument is correct—that is, that most white Americans are terribly cross-pressured by the presence of both democratic ideals and racial discrimination—the use of the term dilemma is invaluable in an examination of racial minority group politics in the United States. This book focuses on two dilemmas. The first dilemma harkens back to the founding of America, is the subject of de Tocqueville’s concern, and continues to resonate today: How does a governmental system that professes in its Constitution and its rhetoric to be democratic and egalitarian handle the obvious reality of its systematic denial of basic rights and privileges to its own citizens based on color? When forced to confront and correct the inequalities, how does it provide for and protect the rights of identifiable racial and ethnic minority groups? The questions this reality-versus-rhetoric dilemma engenders are amazingly similar over time: How shall blacks be counted when apportioning congressional seats (1787)? Is it impermissible to draw “funny-shaped” congressional districts in an attempt to enhance minority group representation (2001)?

The second dilemma is less often articulated, perhaps because it exists within the perspective of the minority groups: What strategy—coalition or conflict—should be used by minority groups in dealing with other minority groups and with the majority group? In essence, this dilemma poses the ‘what do we do about it?” question, given the political realities of the first dilemma. In many, if not most, considerations of this second dilemma, members of minority groups are treated as passive subjects in a majoritarian system and as natural allies against members of the majority. The present volume challenges this perspective and considers a broader range of strategic choices that are available to members of racial and ethnic minority groups as actors within the polity.

In focusing on these dilemmas, this book addresses the importance of race and ethnicity in American politics—the decisions about who gets what, when, where, and how—in general and in the politics (historical, legal, attitudinal, and behavioral) of the four principal racial minority groups in the United States: blacks (African Americans), Latinos, Asians, and Indian peoples in particular. These groups are the focus because unlike other ethnic minorities—for example, the Irish, Italians, and Jews—who have also suffered from social discrimination, blacks, Latinos, Asians, and American Indians have lived in the United States under separate systems of law for varying periods of time. Because each has a history of differential legal status and because this history has led to special attention in contemporary law in an attempt to remedy the effects of historical discrimination, these groups require special attention in political analysis.

There is a tendency in political science literature to assume that all racial minority groups within the United States share similar experiences and political behaviors. Consequently, blacks, Latinos, Asian Americans, and American Indians are often merged under the rubric “minority group politics.” But the increasing recognition of differences among and within these groups has generated debate over whether the concept of minority group politics is useful in thinking about and studying the political experiences of all non-white groups in the United States. Although these groups share racial minority group status within the United States, there are fundamental differences in their experiences, orientations, and political behaviors that affect the relationships among the four groups as well as between each of the groups and the dominant white majority. Similarities in racial minority group status may be the bases for building coalitions, but they may also generate conflict. Consequently, this book focuses on the groups separately at times and comparatively at other times.

TERMS USED IN THIS BOOK

Before proceeding, it is important to define the terms used throughout the book. The way individuals identify themselves and how they are identified by others in the polity is of more than semantic interest. Self-identification, often referred to as group political consciousness, and other-identification can promote or thwart nation building and can affect, as we shall see later, people’s ability and willingness to participate in the political system.

First, the terms black and African American are used interchangeably. Recent research suggests that among Americans of African descent, there is a 1.1 percent difference in those who prefer to be called black (48.1 percent) and those who prefer to be called African American (49.2 percent) (Sigelman, Tuch, and Martin 2005). We prefer the term black for theoretical reasons, however. It concisely describes an identity and a status within American society that are based on color. The black experience in America differs markedly from that of the white ethnics, and the use of African American may convey the impression that blacks are just another ethnic group similar to Italian Americans, Irish Americans, or Polish Americans. Blacks have been subjugated and segregated, on the basis of color, from all whites regardless of their ethnic backgrounds. Further, after one generation, white ethnics have been able to shed their ethnicity and blend into the mainstream of white America, but blacks, because of their skin color, remain identifiable generation after generation. We also use black because it is a convenient proxy term for an insular group that is more or less politically cohesive, that has historically been stigmatized, that is generally depressed economically, and that remains socially isolated.

Similarly, we use Latino and Hispanic interchangeably as umbrella terms when we cannot distinguish among subgroups of the nation’s Spanish-origin population. The largest of the Latino groups are Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, and Cuban Americans. The term Hispanic is eschewed by many intellectuals because it is Eurocentric—the term literally means “lover of Spain”— which, given the national origins of the overwhelming majority of US Latinos, is inappropriate. Moreover, Hispanic is a term devised by the US Census Bureau for classifying individuals and is devoid of any theoretical or political context.

Pew Hispanic Center data from 2012 suggest that Latinos do not primarily identify themselves as members of a Hispanic or Latino community. Although Latino is the preferred identifier among the intelligentsia, few Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Cuban Americans, or other Latinos self-identify themselves with either pan-ethnic term. Most prefer their family’s country of origin term, such as Mexican or Mexican American among Mexican Americans, Puerto Rican among Puerto Ricans, and Cuban among Cubans and so forth (Taylor, Lopez, Martinez, and Velasco 2012).

Third, we use the term Indian peoples or American Indian peoples rather than Native Americans. The reasons for this choice are simple yet profoundly important. The term Native American was used during the nativist (anti-immigration, antiforeigner) movement (1860—1925) and the antiblack, anti-Catholic, and anti-Jewish Ku Klux Klan resurgence during the early 1900s (Higham 1963). The rhetoric of these groups was couched in terms of “native-born” white Protestants vis-à-vis those of “foreign” origin, for example, Catholics. There was even a political party known as the Native American Party. Thus, whereas popular culture may refer to Indian peoples as Native Americans, we feel it is important to separate this group from the white supremacist terms used by the nativist movement. Moreover, we seek to defuse the specious argument made by some that if one is born in the United States, one is a native American, thereby dismissing the unique situation and status of American Indian peoples. Indian peoples encompass a variety of tribes, each with its own history and different structural relationships with the US government. Finally, many Native Hawaiians consider themselves Native Americans. Although not grouping Native Hawaiians with American Indians in the 2000 census, the US Census Bureau, after years of grouping Native Hawaiians with Asians, put them in a new category with Pacific Islanders. Our terms separate American Indians from Native Hawaiians.

The question of who is an Indian is central to any discussion of American Indian politics. The essence of the “Indianness” issue rests not with Indian peoples themselves but with the federal government. One of the inherent powers of Indian tribes as sovereign nations is the power to decide who belongs, and historically tribes have focused on allegiance as the deciding factor. Over time, the federal government has increasingly tried to answer the question of who is or is not covered by legislation. As a result, more than thirty different definitions of who is legally an Indian have been produced depending on “blood quantum,” federal tribal recognition, residence, descent, self-identification, and miscellaneous other factors. Moreover, the question of who is subject to Indian law also depends on the relationship of the tribe to the federal government and on whether the federal government recognizes the tribe. Federal recognition occurs in a variety of ways: congressional action, presidential executive order, administrative ruling by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), or judicial opinion. In addition to federally recognized Indians, there are more than one hundred groups who used to be recognized as Indians but have had their status “terminated” by the federal government and more than fifty tribes who are recognized by state, but not federal, governments (Wilkins 2002:13-27).

Finally, the term Asian American envelops a multiplicity of ethnic origin groups—Japanese, Koreans, Chinese, Filipinos, Southeast Asians, and East Indians (Kitano 1981). Each of these groups has a different history of entrance into the United States, but “Asian Americans have been here for over one hundred and fifty years, before many European immigrant groups” (Takaki 1993:7). The Chinese arrived first in significant numbers, followed by the Japanese, Koreans, Filipinos, Asian Indians, and, later, Southeast Asian refugees. We find no local, contemporary survey data that address ethnic identity for Asian Americans, but the historical record suggests a situation even less unified than that of Hispanics. National rivalries often survived the immigration process, so that, for example, early Japanese immigrants were as anti-Chinese as any of their non-Asian counterparts (Ichioka 1988). Furthermore, unlike Latinos, first-generation immigrant Asians have not shared a common language, a situation that provides a formidable barrier to any pan-Asian identification (Espiritu 1992).

RACE AND ETHNICITY

Although this is not a book about racism—the belief in and practice of using race as a justification for discrimination among individuals—per se, each of the groups considered has been affected by racism, albeit differently. Some of this racism is on an individual level, in which individuals discriminate against other individuals because of their membership, real or perceived, in a racial group. More problematically, some of the racism is institutionalized, which is more complex, less obvious, more routinized, and more difficult to eradicate than discrimination based on individual racism. Individual racism is usually more conscious, and perhaps more blatant, whereas discrimination based on institutional racism is more likely to be subtle, unconscious, and rationalized on the basis of nonracial criteria (Feagin and Feagin 1978). Furthermore, social class and gender differences are variables that both compound the effects of racism and affect the way group members can and do respond to the situations in which they find themselves. When information is available to allow us to take these factors into account, we shall do so. But over and above class and gender, race has been and continues to be a central theme of the American polity and society.

Race—initially construed in terms of white, black, and Indian—has never been a benign concept in the United States. We should remember that the first Africans to arrive at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619 were indentured servants, not slaves. Slavery was not instituted on a broad scale until 1661 in Virginia (twenty years after slavery had first been incorporated into colonial law in Massachusetts) as the need for labor increased and whites found Indian servitude and slavery inadequate and the supply of white indentured servants insufficient. The permanent enslavement of Africans and African Americans was the answer to a “vexing” labor problem. The supply of blacks appeared to be endless, and “if they ran away they were easily detected because of their color. If they proved ungovernable they could be chastised with less qualms and with greater severity than in the case of whites, because Negroes represented heathen people who could not claim the immunities accorded by Christians” (Franklin 1969:72).

With the institution of slavery and the mass importation of black slaves, whites—although solving their labor problems—began to fear the mixture of races and to be concerned that growing numbers of blacks would rebel against the institution of slavery. These fears and the whites’ disdain and contempt for blacks created a dynamic of white oppression of blacks that manifested itself in a multiplicity of ways. Many states, concerned about the purity of the white group, codified into law the degree of black ancestry that qualified one to be legally defined as black and thus subject to legal restrictions. Louisiana and North Carolina used the one-sixteenth criterion (one great-great-grandparent); one-eighth (one great-grandparent) was the standard in Florida, Indiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Carolina, and Tennessee; Oregon used a one-quarter standard (one grandparent) (Spickard 1989:374-75).

This obsession with “black blood” was also codified into legal restrictions on marriage partners, which were referred to as antimiscegenation laws. Throughout most of their history, twenty-nine states maintained laws forbidding interracial marriage between blacks and whites. Over time, many of these laws were amended to include a prohibition on marriages between other racial combinations in addition to blacks and whites. The fourteen states with additional prohibitions included California, between white and Mongolian; Georgia, between white and American Indian, Asiatic Indian, or Mongolian; Nebraska, between white and Chinese or Japanese; and Arizona, between white and Mongolian or Indian. The penalties for interracial marriages ranged from maximum imprisonment of more than two years in fourteen states to no penalty in California. These antimiscegenation laws were not nullified until the US Supreme Court decision Loving v. Virginia in 1967 (Spickard 1989:374-75). Clearly, the black-white dynamic is the most ingrained in the American political system and is the relationship that has formed much of our thinking about race in the United States. Although the importance of the black-white dynamic cannot be diminished, issues of race and the complexity of the racial dynamic extend beyond black and white today.

We are also concerned with issues of ethnicity—in a specific sense of the term. We use the term ethnicity—generally meaning the grouping of people on the basis of learned characteristics, often associated with national origin— because we recognize that within the four groups addressed in this book there are different ethnic origin groups that may have different political attitudes and behaviors. Issues of ethnicity are particularly pertinent within the Latino, Asian, and Indian groups. The US Census Bureau used five racial categories for the 2010 Census—white, black or African American, Asian, American Indian or Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander. Those who do not feel that they fall within the five racial categories could check a sixth category—“Some other race.” The 2010 Census also allowed people ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Acronyms
• Preface
• Chapter 1 - America’s Dilemmas
• Chapter 2 - Resources and Status of America’s Racial Minorities
• Chapter 3 - America’s Racial Minorities in the Contemporary Political System: Actors
• Chapter 4 - America’s Racial Minorities and the Policymaking Process
• Chapter 5: - Intersectional Identity in Racial and Ethnic Politics
• Chapter 6 - Coalition or Competition? Patterns of Interminority Group Relations
• Chapter 7 - Will We “All Get Along”?
• Glossary
• Time Lines
• References
• Index