The Atlantic - Latest Comments in No black senators?

Re: No black senators?

RhondaCoca — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 14:10:23 -0000

"IMO, Sharpton's ideology is very much similar to the ideology of Rush and Jackson, which is why I lump them together.

Patterson is clearly made of a different cloth, and seems (to me) to be in the older range of a different group of black politician (that's why I group him closer to Obama, who is 7 years his junior)."

To begin with, Sharpton is a civil rights leader, that is his focus.

Patterson is a politican and now govenor.

And also, it is not that clear cut. Many outside of NY (I am not sure where you live) don't know about the relationship between Sharpton and patterson.

Re: No black senators?

Thomas R — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 12:58:45 -0000

"West Virginia, Kentucky."

It should be Tennessee, not Kentucky. My mistake. Also West Feliciana apparently is known for Angola prison, which may or may not skew it's voting or demographics.

Re: No black senators?

Thomas R — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 10:24:33 -0000

There might be a limited relevance though. There were fives states that went more Republican this election than last. Those are West Virginia, Kentucky, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma. Still I'm not sure if it's just about race even there. Those states are highly "Bible-oriented" and "Bible-oriented" folk, exempting blacks, are still trending a bit Republican. Plus Oklahoma I think really loves military veterans and former beauty pageant contestants. Lastly Clinton was popular in those states so maybe they were mad Hillary wasn't running. Although I think the exit polls indicated something like 10-20% of the whites there did say race was a factor. I'm originally from Arkansas so that's embarassing, but not too surprising.

Louisiana has an oddball one one in West Feliciana Parish. The parish has a slight black majority and went for McGovern, but it's went Republican in the last three Presidential elections. This election it went for McCain as much as it did Bush in 2004 and Obama only received about one percent more than Kerry did. He did noticeably poorer than Gore or Clinton in the Parish. Kind-of just an oddball outlier, but I like statistics. Maybe there's some odd dislocations due to the hurricane or heightened turnout among whites or something.

Re: No black senators?

zacksback — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 02:15:48 -0000

I read Race Still Matters, and I loved this paragraph:

While the much-discussed “Bradley Effect” - best described as the disconnect between what white voters tell pollsters they are going to do in the voting booth and what they actually do - did not materialize as many had feared, exit poll results reveal that race still matters and the electorate was not as unified as some seemed to hope.

Hilarious. "Whites fooled us by not giving us the Bradley Effect, but don't worry - we've got these other stats to prove they still hate us! Pay no attention to those Iowans behind the curtain!"

Obama received 43% of the white vote, up from Kerry’s 41% of the white vote in 2004, the only group that did not, on the whole, vote for Obama.

"Here's a statistic showing that a black candidate got more of the national white vote in 2008 than a futhamucking white candidate did four years earlier, which we will use to prove how racist white folks still are." Priceless.

I'm not even going to start on the article's loving rendition of how whites in the Deep South voted. Alabama whites for McCain! And stop looking at those damn Iowans again!

(Note that I'm not denying that white voters went for McCain over Obama. It's just that the article is so badly written, it's comedy gold).

Re: No black senators?

dmnshm — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 22:11:56 -0000

+1 to anonymous for stealing my thunder on the senate.

just want to add that a lot of the inspiration for our system of government was found in the writings of Roman politicians, particularly Cicero the great compromiser. as such many of the decisions made can be traced back to the fall of the Roman Republic and consequent attempts by the FFs to avoid the pitfalls of Roman 'democracy' (as the most apt historical precedent for what they were attempting)

so i think these compromises and the creation of a bicameral legislature in the first place can best be seen in the greater historical context, rather than as specifically designed to perpetuate slavery. this is not to say that the senate did not play a role in the perpetuation of slavery, but rather that the PURPOSE behind its creation was rooted in the experience of the Roman republic. (why was it called the 'Senate' anyways?)

Re: No black senators?

evans — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 00:36:05 -0000

Regarding the presidential election, check out Race Still Mattered in the 2008 Election

on www.thedefendersonline.com

Re: No black senators?

Charles — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 12:58:51 -0000

@ Anonymous

Not sure if you're still around to read this (got busy yesterday and couldn't check back in), but I have a couple of points:

1) From the context of the 1982 VRA renewal, it's pretty clear the changes were meant to address what were seen as an incorrect (but binding) Supreme Court opinion. Congress, since at least the 70s, had intended the VRA to have an expansive reading. The 82 renewal/amendment basically restored the VRA to what Congress had thought it meant all along.

2) Asssuming for this limited purpose that the VRA amendments did have a causal relationship with the Democratic loss of the House in 94, I find the "evil genius" theory (that the Republicans were evil geniuses who knew that this is what would happen) hard to accept. I don't think anyone would go out of their way in 1982 to pass a law that could not possibly help them until 1992. There are simply too many variables in the intervening decade. In fact, Republicans at the time thought that they would never have a realistic chance to win the House. Plus, I've never seen any credible evidence that Republicans in Congress held the "evil genius" view.

3) For an academic study on whether there were "perverse effects" to the creation of majority-minority districts, check out http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/stuff_for_blog/Grigg_Katz_MPSA2005.pdf. The authors argue pretty persuasively that any perverse effects. Basically, states with a mandate to create majority-minority districts acted the same as states that did not. The Republicans simply did a lot better than the Democrats in 1994 - as evidenced by them winning 8 Senate seats, which would not be effected by the VRA.

3b) I would also recommend having a look at http://www.fairvote.org/reports/1995/chp3/gans.html, which states that 1994 was the first time Republicans won the Congressional vote (by %) in the South. So, you would have expected massive Republican gains in the South regardless of VRA-related gerrymandering.

4) Even if I'm wrong, I would make one final point - there has so far been no gerrymander so perverse that the people couldn't get past it. Just as Democrats won in 2006 despite Republican gerrymanders, Republicans won in 1994 despite Democratic gerrymanders. At the end of the day, these things may shift the balance slightly, but they cannot withstand waves.

Re: No black senators?

anonymous — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 08:05:46 -0000

Can't make sense if you won't make distinctions: your objection isn't to the Senate, but to those quaint things, the states.

There's no need to give the Founders the benefit of any doubts -- they were damned clear about what they were doing. Richard Ellis is on, I think, is fourth book on the subj. -- the nation was founded on the promise that we're all equal, but the contradictory deal that gave us a national government was a compromise with slavery. It's not like anybody hid it.

But it's REAL important to notice what you're assuming here, cuz it remains the central point in dispute: the American Revolution was fought on the principle that population compels representation. You're taking that for granted -- but the Founders didn't, literally because: it wasn't.

Remember, they had originally demanded as colonists rights they would have had as Englishmen, e.g., "no taxation without representation". It was only when the Crown replied they didn't have those rights because the Crown had not granted them, that we became a revolution: with the Declaration that governments don't grant rights, we're born with 'em.

It's been nearly a century since we added representation in the House, even though the population has tripled AND we've actually added several states, including Senators, so it's no wonder people have forgotten what the American Revolution was FOR.

So your complaint isn't about "demographics of the Senate", it's about the way the Founders put the principle that 'population compels representation' into practice. Methinks we'd all be better off focusing on how that is failing in current practice, which ain't about the Senate.

I mean, think about the history the way it was at the time: backed by the other slave states, Virginia and South Carolina tried to define 'population-compelled representation' by demanding that slaves be counted for "representation" in the House. They were trying to DOUBLE the voting power of the free population in those states -- the votes of human OWNERS. It'd be as if last November my wife and I got to cast four votes, because we own two cars -- except of course the Founders weren't arguing about machines, they were debating people as property: do they count as "population" that compels representation? What would the American Revolution mean, if slaveowners counted more than free people who did not own slaves?

Everybody at the time knew that this was a real serious turn to take in the road, which is why in the end, they didn't quite take it: the creation of the Senate was to PREVENT that, not to perpetuate it.

But fercrysakes, if you want to focus yer bitchin' on something meaningful, stop complaining about the Senate, and look at the House: for generations, the practice after every Census has been to take votes in Congress away from people who can and do vote, to "represent" people who can't and don't.

That's why Congressional districts in states like NY and Massachusetts, which have consistently lost seats in the House, will have 200,000 voters in 'em, while new districts in Arizona and California have half that. The overall population is roughly the same, within the rules of proportionality -- but the idea that We, the People are better represented by forcing 400,000 voters in NY to split two reps by giving two reps to 200,000 voters in Arizona is just nuts: you're wasting time bitching about the Senate, but THIS is something we could actually fix. There's a new Census coming, yanno, and another apportionment after it.

(Note to TNC: your own Baltimore has finally reversed 50 years of population decline -- ya want see 'em screwed out of another seat in Congress?)

INMSHO, I call it the Connecticut rule: no state that gains population should lose representation in Congress. So when states like California or Arizona grow fast enough that proportionality requires they get a new Representative: we just ADD to the total.

That's the other factor -- hidden under all the politically correct bullshit -- which explains how majority-minority districts fail to help African-Americans in Congress became black Senators: because the way we gerrymander House districts is based on the zero-sum apportionment of the same 435 seats among the states, the dynamic is always about representatives picking their voters, instead of voters picking their representatives.

THAT's what we should be bitching about -- and the rest will take care of itself.

Re: No black senators?

Erik Love — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 07:05:20 -0000

Anonymous, and anyone still around for our little history debate, I'll of course agree with you that the Senate did not create slavery, and the Senate did not all by itself keep the slave trade alive. But the point that the constitution included a requirement that the slave trade couldn't be abolished for at least 30 years after ratification helps make my case for me: the constitution includes a bunch of inherently racist shit (including the Senate).

But I still think the Senate, whether intentionally or not, has for most of US history been racist in its very implementation. If nothing else the demographics of the Senate, which is the topic of this thread, is enough evidence that something is fishy with the way the Senate is set up. And we can look at the legislation that has come out of (or died in) the Senate, and consider the reasons why (Missouri compromise and everything else included), and I think any reasonable person will end up at the same spot: the Senate is racist by design. Maybe the founders didn't intend it that way, but that's how it ended up in practice. Petty distinction if you ask me.

Look, we can give the founders every benefit of the doubt, or we can look at them with a bit of skepticism and criticism. I'm just as glad as anyone else that they ended up creating the USA, because otherwise Al Gore would never have invented the internet.

Re: No black senators?

anna perez — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 03:09:30 -0000

TNC-- you realize, of course, that this thread more than indicates that along side your usual thoughtful posters you have some serious political professionals among your "conversaters." Explode my head y'all. I'm lovin' it!

Re: No black senators?

nolabean — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 02:59:33 -0000

Thomas, I see Native Americans all day everyday, but I do live in New Mexico.

I would just like to say that the pool of rising political stars is shallow. Try to name 10 black politicians that are currently in office at any level. Now, name the ones that you believe have an aspiring future. I just said Corey Booker twice, and cut my first list in half when I had to contemplate their futures.

Re: No black senators?

Thomas R — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 02:00:21 -0000

"You ain't never seen two Indians!"

I have. I've been to a town largely made up of Osage Indians.

Granted the Reservation system does mean they might be more among their own, their situation is also greatly different than other groups, but many American Indians don't live on reservations. Granted many of them might additionally live in places we/us rarely visit. (Arizona, New Mexico, Alaska, the Dakotas, Oklahoma, etc) Or maybe not. California has more American Indians than any state and I'd imagine a good deal of them don't live on reservations. There's a fairly sizeable Indian population in Florida as I recall.

One thing I note is he indicates the low chance of Massachusetts having a Black Senator, but they have had a black Senator. True Edward Brooke was Republican, so maybe can't count as black for some here, but he was a moderate/liberal Republican in a different era.

Re: No black senators?

adamnvillani — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 01:49:09 -0000

If gerrymandering is the primary reason we lack black representatives, why do we see this problem most acutely in the Senate, where gerrymandering is effectively impossible?

I think you're misreading the argument. The argument is not that gerrymandering causes a lack of black representatives. It is that gerrymandering concentrates black representation within gerrymandered districts. While gerrymandering caused an increase in black representation, it took away black voters from surrounding districts, causing those districts to become more conservative instead of mixed.

Also, this means that much of the "farm team" of potential senators in a state consists of politicians who have only had to compete in --- and appeal to --- gerrymandered districts instead of the more mixed crowd one needs to win statewide elections.

Re: No black senators?

anonymous — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 23:33:11 -0000

I doubt anybody cares this far down in the thread, but that's waaaay too much retrohistory. It's not how it looked at the time, for which there is a lot of evidence.

The Founders largely (but not unanimously) conceived of the Union as an organization of states. Since smaller states were understandably afraid of being outvoted by larger ones, they liked the idea of a Senate with two Senators per state, regardless of population. Since the smallest states at the time of the Founding included most of the least pro-slavery states -- New Hampshire, Connecticut, Delaware, it's simply wrong to regard the Senate as just a way to perpetuate slavery. It was a way to keep the big states from dominating the small ones.

Slavery cut across the conflict between big and small states; it wasn't on one side.

The biggest state was Virginia, the one absolutely indispensible state for both the Revolution and the Union. Along with the other southern states, Virginia took the view that slaves should be counted as part of the population for representation in the House. Naturally, both the small states (especially the least pro-slavery ones in the North, but also, if less vocally, the smaller Southern states) and the large Northern ones, like New York, told Virginia to take a hike -- they realized that the slave states' outrageous proposal wasn't just a way to give slave states in effect 60% more of a vote than free states, it was also a way to perpetuate slavery itself.

But the Constitution didn't perpetuate slavery. Nor did the creation of the Senate anticipate, even implicitly, the perpetuation of slavery. If anything, it was the opposite.

First, Roger Sherman (from Connecticut) proposed the 3/5 compromise, so the slave states would join the Union. Ill, but since none of us has managed to do as much for liberty and democracy as the folks who created the United States Constitution, humility might be useful in bitching about it: I'd have preferred slaves didn't count at all for representation in Congress, but they didn't ask me.

In any case, 3/5s is better than 100%, which was the original proposal.

Second, we got a Senate that -- at the time -- actually INCREASED the power of the states (New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Delaware) that wanted an immediate end to the trans-Atlantic slave trade. So (another compromise to keep the slave states in the Union), the Constitution included a requirement that the slave trade could not be banned until ... 1808, I think it was.

Which they promptly did as soon as the Constitution allowed, through votes in Congress -- INCLUDING the Senate that you're bitching about. When they abolished the slave trade, the hard part was the House, not the Senate. It wasn't until much later, the days of Calhoun, that the Senate became the place where a minority of the nation's population developed a veto -- and that was because of the way the country was adding states, the Missouri compromise and all that, plus the way immigrants went disproportionately to the North (since the south had its own cheap labor).

The Founders just kicked the can down the road for a generation -- which is a pretty good sign that 1) they couldn't have gotten a country, if they had tried to resolve it at the time, and for better or worse, they chose to create the USA, and 2) it is reasonable to conclude that most of 'em really did figure that slavery would gradually decline and disappear, as it had in much of Europe, especially without the constant importation of new captives from Africa.

They were wrong about the second part, but that was because of the cotton gin and South Carolina going nuts, infecting the rest of the South, not because of the creation of the Senate.

Re: No black senators?

Erik Love — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 22:23:17 -0000

Can we look at the Senate from a slightly different perspective?

Why do we have a Senate in the first place?

That's not a simple question, right. I mean partly the framers of the constitutions wanted a bicameral legislature to provide a nice contrast to England, but a huge part of why we have a Senate is: to protect the institution of chattel slavery.

The Senate's existence owes a lot to the 3/5ths compromise, which of course was a fancy way to codify the "peculiar institution" into the supposedly democratic constitution. Aside from restricting the franchise to white men, the constitution made damn sure that abolitionist white men would never have enough senators to outvote pro-slavery white men -- even if abolitionists outnumbered the pro-slavers in the country at large.

The Senate is intentionally anti-democratic. As it was originally conceived, the Senators weren't even popularly elected. Today, it allows the 500,000 residents of Wyoming to have the same representation as the 35 million people in California. This creates a situation where Senators representing a very small percentage of the US population (or representing a small, unpopular ideology) can literally shut down the federal government.

We see the legacy of this structural racism all the time. Despite a wholesale landslide in most elections in 2008 for Democrats, from 2009 until at least 2011, the 40 Republican senators will basically have the ability to stop any legislation they want through the filibuster.

Oh, and there are no African American Senators, either, for many reasons, including those mentioned by Silver and TNC. You have to wonder if the framers are as farsighted as they're made out to be, and if they somehow foresaw the fact that only like a handful of African Americans would ever get into the Senate, even by 2009.

In any event, one thing is very clear: for lots of reasons, the Senate is a big Eff You to non-white Americans.

Re: No black senators?

Tray — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 17:13:23 -0000

I think that Republicans in the Bush Justice Department, and Democrats in the Clinton Justice Department (esp. Deval Patrick, who ran the Civil Rights Division at DOJ at this time), were both extremely over-aggressive in enforcing the VRA. As for Dole, he was the guy responsible for the "no proportional representation" language quoted above, and when conservatives on the Court try to make a case that the VRA doesn't mean what it's been read to mean, the first place they look is Dole's remarks in the Congressional Record. Besides that, this whole matter of whether or not majority-minority districting was really bad for the Democratic Party is a heavily debated question, and there are some very bright liberal fans of majority-minority districting who say that it wasn't. Pam Karlan at Stanford Law has written a lot on this issue from that side of the fence.

Re: No black senators?

anonymous — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 17:00:05 -0000

Psst... it wasn't a "major strategic mistake" ... for the Republican Party.

Re: No black senators?

Tray — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 16:52:48 -0000

"So my point is that it was a MAJOR strategic mistake to wind up tripling the CBC (and moving it to the left) while eliminating the entire southern moderate wing of the Democratic party"

It would've been a major strategic mistake if it were actually what anyone did (other than DOJ, in their misguided enforcement of the statute), but Congress didn't. The law just doesn't say that. It says:

A violation of subsection (a) of this section is established if, based on the totality of circumstances, it is shown that the political processes leading to nomination or election in the State or political subdivision are not equally open to participation by members of a class of citizens protected by subsection (a) of this section in that its members have less opportunity than other members of the electorate to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice. The extent to which members of a protected class have been elected to office in the State or political subdivision is one circumstance which may be considered: Provided, That nothing in this section establishes a right to have members of a protected class elected in numbers equal to their proportion in the population.

No majority minority districting requirement there, necessarily, although it's been read that way.

Re: No black senators?

anonymous — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 16:49:38 -0000

Tray, you don't think the Republicans in the Reagan/Bush 1 Justice Department and the ones working for Bob Dole, like, talked or anything?

Or that the lawsuits filed by the RNC in support of majority-minority districts had some political purpose?

I'm just sayin'.

Re: No black senators?

anonymous — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 16:40:30 -0000

Charles -- it's a math thing.

(And after this, you should ALWAYS remember that Adam Clayton Powell was not only an African-American in Congress in 1965, he was a major player in Great Society legislation. Killing Jim Crow wasn't all bus boycotts and marches -- there were bills and hearings and markups and floor debates, w/ ACP flashing his cufflinks all over the joint.)

Of the 66 seats Democrats in the House lost between 1981 and 1995, 54 of 'em were lost after the 1990 reapportionment. If you want to argue that 1992 proves it wasn't reapportionment cuz there were 258 Democrats elected to the House that year, I'd respond that 1992 was Clinton's year: the first true test of the new Congressional districts was the off-year Republican landslide.

Sure, there were a lot of factors -- the failure of health care, the Clinton budget's tax increases that hadn't started to grow the economy yet, and so on. The Contract with America certainly nationalized the election -- but the fact is, the districts had changed substantially in at least 40 of the 54 Democratic seats that went Republican that year, mostly because of the majority-minority requirement.

So my point is that it was a MAJOR strategic mistake to wind up tripling the CBC (and moving it to the left) while eliminating the entire southern moderate wing of the Democratic party.

And just to repeat Silver's point -- this affects the prospect of African Americans in the Senate, because a US representative who wins national office from a state is an ideal position to compete state-wide for a Senate seat... unless his district has been drawn to be as unlike the rest of the state as possible.

Re: No black senators?

Steve — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 16:33:43 -0000

I'm not sure if there were any blacks in the House in 1965.

In fact, John Conyers himself was in the House in 1965! According to Wikipedia the total number was 6.

Re: No black senators?

Tray — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 15:35:14 -0000

But when Bob Dole did the Voting Rights Extension back in the day, Republicans had a strategy, Democrats played defense -- and the Congressional Black Caucus made an interesting bargain.

So Dole wrote the law in time for the 1990 Census that if you COULD draw a majority-minority district, you HAD to draw it.

I'm writing a thesis about the evils of majority-minority districting, so I sympathize with the spirit of your post. But this just isn't true. What happened was this. In '65 the Voting Rights Act gets passed. Blacks get registered, but then they discover that in many southern towns and states, electoral structures were put in place at the turn of the century, back when blacks were still voting, to prevent them from electing anyone. Namely, lots of multi-member districts and city councils elected at-large, instead of from individual wards. So this complicated vote dilution jurisprudence arises where Section 2 of the VRA was used to break these systems up. Then in 1980, the Supreme Court rules in Mobile v. Bolden that in order to show a violation of Section 2, you need to prove that the town made its dilutive electoral system with the intent of diluting black votes. Now, in Mobile, Alabama, they were actually able to go back to the archives and determine that in 1900 when they made the city council election at-large, their goal was to prevent blacks from getting elected. But in much smaller towns without that kind of archival evidence, it was impossible to do. So, in 1982, Congress, led by Ted Kennedy and Dole, amends the VRA and crafts a results test that ignores intent. And here's where you really get things wrong, because (a) it was Dole who put in the proviso that the VRA doesn't guarantee proportional representation and made a lot of statements in the record attempting to minimize what the whole thing meant, and (b) the VRA doesn't actually require you to draw majority-minority districts where you can draw them; at most, it requires you to draw them up to a point of proportionality, and I would actually argue that it doesn't even require that. It's an insanely vague statute. Now, of course it's true that the Department of Justice understood the law to mean just what you claim Dole intended it to mean, but they were wrong and the Supreme Court has repeatedly said so.

Re: No black senators?

rikyrah — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 15:18:37 -0000

Yes, look at your home state of Maryland. Maryland could have had a Black senator. But Maryland's Black voter apparently decided party was more important than race. So are they racists for voting against a Black candidate?

Posted by Howard J. Fiske

Don't blame Black folk for Michael Steele not being a Senator. Steele got 30% of the Black vote. I want someone to point out to me a White Republican that loses after they get 30% of the Black vote.

Re: No black senators?

JRVJ — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 15:02:49 -0000

RhondaCoca,

IMO, Sharpton's ideology is very much similar to the ideology of Rush and Jackson, which is why I lump them together.

(Perhaps my point didn't go across well enough, but by generation I was not necessarily speaking chronologically, but in regards to the attittudes of different groups of black politicians).

In re: Harold Ford, I've been thinking, and though it's clear that racism was part of the reason he wasn't elected (this is, after all, TN, and Corker did put up that "Call me" ad), it's also true that Ford had never held state-wide office in TN.

Seeing as how TN is an East-to-West state, and Ford's hometown of Memphis is on the extreme SW of the State, he was somewhat unknown in the center and east of the state.

(FWIW, Corker was from Chattanooga, which is in the SC of TN. I don't know the population densities and TV markets of TN well enough to opine on whether Ford and Corker were fairly equally well known in TN at the time of the 2006 Senate run, but I do think that Ford would benefit from State wide office if he eventually wants to go the Senate).

Re: No black senators?

zacksback — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 15:02:08 -0000

...a country where a white woman will vote for Obama but walk past an empty seat next to a black man on the Metro).

I always sit down next to Black men on the subway or train. Or White men. Or Latina women. I commute, and an open seat's a goddamn open seat. (What *is* hilarious about sitting next to Black men, especially of the young hip-hop variety, is how much it PISSES them off. They're thinking they'll take up two because us whiteys are so a-feared, and then my middle-aged honky ass comes along and says, "'scuse me." Heh. Post-racial FTW!).