Demographics Are (Men’s) Destiny

Chapter 4 takes long-standing debates over the “population–seats” relationship in a new direction by focusing on how the preponderance of white-majority districts and very small number of majority-minority districts limit the realistic array of electoral opportunities for Asian American women and men and Latina/os. The chapter also shows that the utility of majority-minority districts in advancing descriptive representation has been mischaracterized. Using the GRACE dataset, Chapter 4’s analysis shows that the relationship between a racial group’s population size in a district, and its likelihood of having a descriptive representative on the ballot or in office, is much more robust for men than women. To explain why, Chapter 4 uses interview data to demonstrate that within these rare districts that are widely perceived as nonwhite candidates’ primary opportunity for representation, the politics of recognition among political elites often disadvantage Asian American women and Latinas, relative to co-racial men.