Steadfast Democrats

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ismail K. White ◽  
Chryl N. Laird
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Party Identification ◽  
Black Americans ◽  
Civil Rights Era ◽  
American Experience ◽  
Social Expectation ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Norms

Black Americans are by far the most unified racial group in American electoral politics, with 80 to 90 percent identifying as Democrats—a surprising figure given that nearly a third now also identify as ideologically conservative, up from less than 10 percent in the 1970s. Why has ideological change failed to push more black Americans into the Republican Party? This book answers this question with a pathbreaking new theory that foregrounds the specificity of the black American experience and illuminates social pressure as the key element of black Americans' unwavering support for the Democratic Party. The book argues that the roots of black political unity were established through the adversities of slavery and segregation, when black Americans forged uniquely strong social bonds for survival and resistance. It explains how these tight communities have continued to produce and enforce political norms—including Democratic Party identification in the post-Civil Rights era. The social experience of race for black Americans is thus fundamental to their political choices. Black voters are uniquely influenced by the social expectations of other black Americans to prioritize the group's ongoing struggle for freedom and equality. When navigating the choice of supporting a political party, this social expectation translates into affiliation with the Democratic Party. The book explores where and how black political norms are enforced, what this means for the future of black politics, and how this framework can be used to understand the electoral behavior of other communities.

Who Favors Legalizing Physician-Assisted Suicide? The Vote on Michigan's Proposal B

2001 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-163 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Strate ◽  
Timothy Kiska ◽  
Marvin Zalman
Keyword(s):  
Republican Party ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Assisted Suicide ◽  
Church Attendance ◽  
Personal Autonomy ◽  
Party Identification ◽  
Physician Assisted Suicide ◽  
Sanctity Of Life ◽  
Initiative Process ◽  
Social Liberalism

At the November 1998 general election, Michigan citizens were given the opportunity to vote on Proposal B, an initiative that would have legalized physician-assisted suicide (PAS). PAS initiatives also have been held in Washington State, California, Oregon, and Maine, with only Oregon's passing. We use exit poll data to analyze the vote on Proposal B. Attributes associated with social liberalism—Democratic Party identification, less frequent church attendance, more education, and greater household income—led to increased odds of a “yes” vote. Attributes associated with social conservatism—Republican Party identification and frequent church attendance—led to decreased odds of a “yes” vote. Similar to the abortion issue, PAS's supporters strongly value personal autonomy, whereas its opponents strongly value the sanctity of life. Voter alignments like those in Michigan will likely appear in other states with the initiative process if PAS reaches their ballots.

Before Reagan: The Development of Abortion’s Partisan Divide

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 1031-1047
Author(s):  
Neil A. O’Brian
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Political Mobilization ◽  
Vote Choice ◽  
The Political ◽  
Mass Public ◽  
Pro Life ◽  
Pro Choice

What explains the alignment of antiabortion positions within the Republican party? I explore this development among voters, activists, and elites before 1980. By 1970, antiabortion attitudes among ordinary voters correlated with conservative views on a range of noneconomic issues including civil rights, Vietnam, feminism and, by 1972, with Republican presidential vote choice. These attitudes predated the parties taking divergent abortion positions. I argue that because racial conservatives and military hawks entered the Republican coalition before abortion became politically activated, issue overlap among ordinary voters incentivized Republicans to oppose abortion rights once the issue gained salience. Likewise, because proabortion voters generally supported civil rights, once the GOP adopted a Southern strategy, this predisposed pro-choice groups to align with the Democratic party. A core argument is that preexisting public opinion enabled activist leaders to embed the anti (pro) abortion movement in a web of conservative (liberal) causes. A key finding is that the white evangelical laity’s support for conservative abortion policies preceded the political mobilization of evangelical leaders into the pro-life movement. I contend the pro-life movement’s alignment with conservatism and the Republican party was less contingent on elite bargaining, and more rooted in the mass public, than existing scholarship suggests.

“Katrina is the Mother We Will Remember Until the Next Mother”

2019 ◽  
pp. 61-90
Author(s):  
Cameron Leader-Picone
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
American Literature ◽  
Hurricane Katrina ◽  
African American Literature ◽  
Structural Racism ◽  
Civil Rights Era ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
The Social ◽  
Long Division

This chapter analyzes representations of Hurricane Katrina in African American literature to argue that the storm served to illustrate the entrenchment of structural racism and the importance of a specifically racialized tradition in African American literature. Adopting the theoretical framework of “slow violence,” the chapter analyzes two novels which depict both the storm and its aftermath: Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones (2011) and Kiese Laymon’sLong Division (2013). In the context of the early twenty-first century, these representations of Katrina do not displace the social advancements of African Americans but instead force recognition of the incompleteness not only of specific political battles but also of ongoing race, gender, and class-based narratives, thereby questioning the optimism of a rhetoric of post-Blackness. In particular, the novels establish continuity between Civil Rights Era traumas and struggles and Hurricane Katrina to push against a rhetoric focused on the transcendence of the past.

How Texas Turned Red

2020 ◽  
pp. 90-108
Author(s):  
Kenneth P. Miller
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Economic Policies ◽  
The South ◽  
Dormant State ◽  
The 1960S

This chapter explains how Texas came to align with the Republican Party. Texas is now the essential Republican state, but for most of its history it was part of the solid Democratic South. In the mid-twentieth century, the Texas Democratic Party divided into liberal and conservative factions—partly over race and civil rights but also over a range of questions including New Deal economic policies and anti-communism. Texas Democrats engaged in what V. O. Key called the most intense intraparty fight of any state in the South. The long-dormant state Republican Party began to revive in the 1960s as many Texans became alienated from a national Democratic Party that was shifting to the left. Republican gains produced a period of balanced two-party competition that lasted from the 1970s through the 1990s. By the early 2000s, the GOP established dominance, making Texas the nation’s largest and most powerful Republican state.

Afterword

Neo-Passing ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michele Elam
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Racial Formation ◽  
Civil Rights Era ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Post Civil Rights

The afterword argues that so-called neo-passing narratives distinctively highlight the performative dimension to racial formation and are, moreover, particularly attentive to the social and political consequences of race. This essay argues that the desire for passing to be a phenomenon of the past can be problematic in that it wills away the social insights afforded by cultural and literary narratives of passing in the post–Civil Rights era.

The Transformation of the Republican and Democratic Party Coalitions in the U.S.

2008 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 433-450 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary Miller ◽  
Norman Schofield
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
The United States ◽  
Two Dimensional ◽  
The Social ◽  
William Jennings Bryan ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Social Conservatives

Because the space of policies is two-dimensional, parties in the United States are coalitions of opposed interests. The Republican Party contains both socially conservative and socially liberal groups, though both tend to be pro-business. The increasing dominance of the social conservatives has angered some prominent Republicans, even causing a number of them to change party allegiance. Over time, the decreasing significance of the economic axis may cause the Republican Party to adopt policies that are analogous to those proposed by William Jennings Bryan in 1896: populist and anti-business. In parallel, the Democratic Party will increasingly appeal to pro-business, social liberals, so the party takes on the mantel of Lincoln.

The Gender Gap Is a Race Gap: Women Voters in US Presidential Elections

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 1135-1145 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane Junn ◽  
Natalie Masuoka
Keyword(s):  
Gender Gap ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Presidential Elections ◽  
White Women ◽  
Party Identification ◽  
The United States ◽  
Election Study ◽  
National Election Study ◽  
American National Election Study

Scholarship on women voters in the United States has focused on the gender gap, showing that, since the 1980s, women are more likely to vote for Democratic Party candidates than men. The persistence of the gender gap has nurtured the conclusion that women are Democrats. This article presents evidence upending that conventional wisdom. It analyzes data from the American National Election Study to demonstrate that white women are the only group of female voters who support Republican Party candidates for president. They have done so by a majority in all but 2 of the last 18 elections. The relevance of race for partisan choice among women voters is estimated with data collected in 2008, 2012, and 2016, and the significance of being white is identified after accounting for political party identification and other predictors.

scholarly journals Before they were Diamonds: The Intergenerational Migration of Kentucky's Coal Camp Blacks

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karida L. Brown
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Civil Rights Era ◽  
Diasporic Identity ◽  
The Social ◽  
Research Questions

My dissertation project is an empirical examination of the ways in which social transformations of the 20th century—read along the grain of the Great Migration—impacted the collective identity of African Americans over space and time. In this work, I will analyze the racialized subjectivity and identity (trans)formation of a diaspora of African Americans who partook in an intergenerational migration from the plantations of central Alabama to the coalfields of southeastern Kentucky in the first half of the 20th century, and then moved on to urban cities throughout the United States throughout the Civil Rights-era. The latter generation of migrants collectively experienced major shifts in the social structures of their community of origin, such as transitioning from “colored schools” to a State mandated integrated school system, retrenchment in the labor economy of a single-industry community, and the subsequent mass out-migration from their community of origin. These jolts to the social structures of their society not only altered their horizon of opportunity, but also resulted in major dislocations in the cultural systems that informed their collective identity. Particular to the case, I am concerned with the ways in which these cultural traumas—memories of events that collectivities believe rended the social fabric of their society—impacted the collective identity of this diaspora. In spite of their geographic dispersion, this generation of migrants has managed to stay connected through a set of “invented traditions” that they constituted at the tail end of their out-migration. For example, the Eastern Kentucky Social Club—an organization established by this group of migrants in 1970—has hosted a reunion in different cities across the country every year for the last forty-four years. At its height, this event drew over 3,000 African American migrants from across the country. The broader aim of the project is to reconstruct the rich history and culture of this special population of Black Appalachians to put forth a re-examination of W.E.B. Du Bois’ phenomenological analysis of racialized subjectivity and African American identity formation in 20th century America.The overarching research questions that guide this study are (1) How do we explain the emergence of their post-migration diasporic identity? (2) How has their collective identity been negotiated, transformed and reinscribed through their changing, and sometimes contested, subjectivity as racialized American citizens through the continuum of the pre and post civil rights era? I will specifically focus on three events that have been the site of transformation for the individuals in my case, (1) the school desegregation process—an event that occurred almost a decade after the Brown vs. Board of Education decision in this region, (2) the mass out-migration from southeastern Kentucky—a community level event that was a precursor to the emergence of their diasporic identity, and (3) the construction of the EKAAMP archive—an event that marks the institutional transference from memory to history. These eventful temporalities provide three categories of analysis that will allow me to make important linkages to my research questions in the context of the past, present, and future.

scholarly journals African Americans in the Republican Party: Taking the Road Less Traveled

2006 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 93-113
Author(s):  
Phillip J. Ardoin ◽  
Ronald J. Vogel
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
General Population ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Party Identification ◽  
Demographic Characteristics ◽  
The Road ◽  
Racial Issues ◽  
Election Studies

While most African Americans identify with the Democratic Party, a small minority chooses to identify and support the party of Lincoln. However, very little is known about the demographic make-up or policy preferences of these individuals. Utilizing the 1992-2002 American National Election Studies, we provide a multivariate analysis of the demographic characteristics and policy leanings of African American Republicans. Our analysis suggests several systematic patterns regarding African Americans Republican Party identification. First, as with the general population, we find they are more likely to be male, from the South and to identify themselves as conservatives. However, unlike the general population, we find they are not more likely to maintain upper or middle incomes or to view religion as an important guide in their life. Third, we find African Americans born after 1950 are more likely to identify themselves as Republican. Fourth, we find African American Republicans feel less warmth toward blacks than the majority of their brethren and are less likely to view race or social welfare issues as significant problems in America. Ultimately, we conclude racial issues are still the key to understanding African American Partisanship.

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