|
One of the most notable racial divides in voting this year has been the gap between African-Americans and Hispanics during the Democratic primary campaign. Blacks have been supporting Illinois Sen. Barack Obama by margins as great as 9-to-1, while Hispanics have given New York Sen. Hillary Clinton a 2-to-1 advantage in multiple states.
Is this just a fluke, or does it speak to some underlying enmity between the nation's two largest minority groups? There does appear to be evidence of tension between blacks and Hispanics in some areas, based on economic and political competition. But many observers say that claims of a deep divide are overblown.
A widely cited comment by Sergio Bendixen, Clinton's Hispanic pollster, set the template for debate about this issue on the presidential campaign trail. "The Hispanic voter — and I want to say this very carefully — has not shown a lot of willingness or affinity to support black candidates," Bendixen told The New Yorker in January.
There have been some schisms between the two groups. Traditionally black areas such as South Los Angeles and Compton have become majority Latino, and Hispanics have also made strong inroads in Southern states such as North Carolina and Georgia, "bringing change to communities where blacks had gained economic and political power after years of struggle against Jim Crow laws," writes Stephan Malanga, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
Studies of Southern cities conducted by Duke University political scientist Paula D. McClain have found that blacks believe Latinos have robbed them of jobs, while Hispanics regard blacks as "slothful and untrustworthy."
"There is considerable anger among African-Americans about the immigrant labor force that has taken over whole sections of the economy and excluded African-Americans from those jobs," says Ronald Walters, director of the University of Maryland's African American Leadership Center. Walters notes that Hispanics sometimes complain in turn that black mayors or members of Congress don't do much for them in areas where black and brown residents live together.
In local elections, there have been examples both of coalitions built between the two groups, and of one constituency's refusal to vote for candidates drawn from the other. In Democratic primary campaigns over the years in New York and Texas, Hispanics have tended to vote for whites over blacks, and blacks have returned the favor when it comes to contests between Anglos and Hispanics. On the other hand, Hispanics have lent overwhelming support to several black big-city mayors, while at least eight African-American congressmen currently represent areas that are heavily Latino.
In Los Angeles, Latinos now represent 46.5 percent of the population — up from just 18.5 percent 30 years ago. The black share of the population, in the meantime, has shrunk from 17 percent to 11.2 percent, fueling some animosity from both sides as blacks continue to enjoy disproportionate sway. Antonio Villaraigosa, a Latino politician, carried just 20 percent of the black vote in his first race for mayor of Los Angeles against James Hahn, who is Anglo.
Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. (Getty Images/Neilson Barnard)
|
But Villaraigosa carried blacks during his successful rematch against Hahn in 2005. "When people say to me, African-Americans didn't vote for you in your first race, I say, well, they didn't know me," Villaraigosa told the Chicago Tribune. "In my second race, they did, and they voted for me overwhelmingly."
Hahn's family had enjoyed a long history of support from L.A.'s black community. Such personal ties, as opposed to racial preferences, may go a long way toward explaining Clinton's performance among Hispanics this year.
Hispanics were big supporters of Bill Clinton and have proven to be a key constituency for Hillary Clinton as well. According to exit polling, she took 64 percent of the Latino vote in the Nevada caucuses, to Obama's 26 percent. Her share of the Hispanic vote in California was 67 percent, while in Texas it was 64 percent.
"If you look at the demographics of Latinos — working class, lower educational attainment — it's very similar to the demographics of whites who are supporting Hillary," says Loyola Marymount University political scientist Fernando Guerra.
Guerra adds that, "African-Americans would be supporting Hillary overwhelmingly, if everything about Obama's background and platform were the same, but he was white."
David Bositis, an expert on black voting behavior at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, says that Hispanics are choosing to support Clinton, as opposed to voting against Obama. Taken as a group, Hispanics did well economically during her husband's time in the White House.
Although that is also true about African-Americans, the latter group has been motivated by Obama's historic candidacy but put off by the Clinton campaign's occasional injection of his race as an issue. "If Hillary hadn't blown it with them, she would have been receiving at least a third of the black vote, instead of none," Bositis says.
|
Read the Full Report (Subscription Required)
