The Geography of Racially Polarized Voting: Calibrating Surveys at the District Level

Voting in the United States has long been known to divide sharply along racial lines, and the degree of racially polarized voting evidently varies across regions, and even within a state. Researchers have further studied variation in racially polarized voting using aggregate data techniques, but these methods assume that variation in individual preferences is not related to geography. This paper presents estimates based on individual level data of the extent and variation in racially polarized voting across US Congressional Districts. Leveraging large, geocoded sample surveys, we develop an improved method for measuring racial voting patterns at the Congressional District-level. The method overcomes challenges in previous attempts of survey modeling by allowing survey data to inform the synthetic population model. This method has sufficient power to provide precise estimates of racial polarization even when survey data are sparse. We find that variation across districts but within states explains roughly 20 percent of the total variation; states explain a further 20 percent of the total variation, and 55 percent of the variation is simply national differences between races. The Deep South still has the highest racial polarization between White and Black voters, but some Midwestern congressional districts exhibit comparably high polarization. The polarization between White and Hispanic voters is far more variable than between Black and White voters.

The “Obama Effect” Revisited

In this chapter, we examine the influence of Obama’s presence on racial divisions in partisanship. We interpret these divisions as evidence of racial polarization. Since Obama is a Democrat and because African Americans vote overwhelmingly for Democratic candidates in presidential elections, we define polarization as a gap in the extent to which African and Anglo Americans identify with the Democratic Party. Our focus on polarization stems from the fact that partisanship has always been a racialized concept in American politics. We ask the following questions: Was there a race gap in party identification during the Obama presidency? If so, did the former president’s media activities influence the width of this race gap? How did Obama’s media presence affect the party gap? Did the former president push Whites away from the Democratic Party (while pulling African Americans into it)? Or did Obama make racial differences in partisanship disappear? We conclude this chapter by discussing the substantive implications of our evidence and the limitations of our research design. When discussing potential avenues for research, we focus on the fact that Obama’s presidency gave race scholars the opportunity to study descriptive representation in the nation’s highest political office.

The Ethics of Engagement

This book discusses the relationship between media, conflict, and democratization in Africa from the perspective of media ethics. Despite the commonly held view that conflict is a destructive political force that can destabilize democracies, the argument in this book is that while many conflicts can indeed become violent and destructive, they can also be managed in a way that can render them productive and communicative to democracy. Drawing on theoretical insights from the fields of journalism studies, political studies, and cultural studies, the book discusses the ethics of conflict coverage and proposes a normative model for covering conflict and democratization. The book argues for an “ethics of listening” that would enable the media to help de-escalate violent conflict and contribute to the deepening of an agonistic democratic culture in contexts of high inequality, ethnic and racial polarization, and uneven access to media. This argument is illustrated by examples drawn from recent events in African democracies such as student protests, community activism, struggles for resources, and social media conflicts. The book also scrutinizes the media’s ethical roles and responsibilities in African societies by considering questions regarding journalistic professionalism, ethical codes, and regulation in the context of rising misinformation. The book provides a critical African perspective on global debates about media, politics, and democracy and the media’s ethical commitments in contexts of conflict.

Voting Rights, Deindustrialization, and Republican Ascendancy in the South

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 revolutionized politics in the American South. These changes also had economic consequences, generating gains for white as well as Black southerners. Contrary to the widespread belief that the region turned Republican in direct response to the Civil Rights Revolution, expanded voting rights led to twenty-five years of competitive two-party politics, featuring strong biracial coalitions in the Democratic Party. These coalitions remained competitive in most states until the Republican Revolution of the 1990s. This abrupt rightward shift had many causes, but critical for southern voters were the trade liberalization measures of 1994, specifically NAFTA and the phase-out of the Multi-Fiber Arrangement which had protected the textiles and apparel industries for decades. The consequences of Republican state regimes have been severe, including intensified racial polarization, loss of support for public schools and higher education, and harsh policies toward low-income populations.

Lived Experience and Living History: A Case Study of the Black on Campus Student Journalism Project

Journalism jobs decreased significantly in the last decade and so have training opportunities for students, including Black college students. This essay explores the national student journalism project Black on Campus, a partnership with a national magazine and a university research center, that aimed to offer Black college students an opportunity to gain journalism training and be published by a national publication. This essay details how the program filled a gap in journalism training and education for Black students and documented the experiences of Black students during high racial polarization in the nation and on college campuses.

Probing peace journalism: The discursive construction of blackness within the racial democracy of Colombia

This study examines the discursive construction of blackness in the Colombian men’s magazine SoHo, using peace journalism as an evaluative framework. Specifically, it examines 116 feature stories focused on race, published from June 1999 to June 2017. The study found that SoHo did not openly cover racial-structural inequalities, did not contextualize racism, omitted the voices of people of African descent, neglected the race of Black leaders, evaded controversial language, disregarded racial polarization, and presented Black people as disempowered individuals while championing non-Blacks as agents of change. Although SoHo is not a peace journalism project, the magazine’s coverage of blackness revealed that avoiding incendiary language – a key tenet of peace journalism – may in fact maintain power dynamics between oppressors and oppressed, as misunderstanding interaction with collaboration does.

Solomon, Sheba, and the haunting of race in the Church and biblical interpretation

In order to counteract racial polarization within and among US churches and society today, this article proposes remembering, confessing, and repenting of traditions of racialized biblical interpretation that have been complicit with traditional, hierarchical gender, race, and class divisions. Alternative interpretations of the Solomon and Sheba narrative in 1 Kings 10 offer ways to reconsider how race continues to haunt society and Christian churches in the United States. The author suggests that the moral imperative of whiteness is for white US Christians to embrace white racial particularity as a first step in dismantling the subtle racism of assumed white cultural normativity. As part of multiracial, multicultural, multifaith, global communities, white US Christians need more than ever to ponder the cultural consequences of our biblical interpretations.