Minority Representation Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

The concept of minority political representation can take many forms. Primarily, the reference “minority” can denote a numerical or marginalized group identifier. Given the predominance of scholarship that focuses on the legislative branch of government in the United States, herein minority representation is defined as the congressional responsiveness to minority and/or African American interests in the United States. To examine that concept, this entry briefly highlights research concerning members’ voting ideologies, the role of voting legislation and redistricting in responsive to minority interests, and, finally, how the representation of minority interests has evolved over time.

Differing Perspectives

A main goal of minority representation is to empower minorities by enacting policy preferences deemed substantively significant to their sociopolitical lives. How best that empowerment occurs and by which mechanisms has long been debated. For some, when it becomes time to redraw congressional district lines, it is important to create and sustain districts that have a majority-minority population. Many such scholars claim that those districts are necessary to elect a sizable number of African American and Latino representatives. For these scholars, this matters, because the descriptive presence of minority representatives suggests that they are more likely to support minority interests. However, other scholars disagree and argue that in some instances (e.g., white Democrats versus black Republicans), the political party of the representatives is as important as (if not more important than) their racial identification in predicting how they may vote on issues that matter to minority interests. Finally, some scholars caution that what is often in the interests of minority representatives is not necessarily in the interests of or of interest at all to minority voters.

For other experts, to some extent, the effective representation of minority interests rightfully assumes an ideologically homogenous district. While that homogeneity need not be limited to racial identity or political party preferences, some norms of similar values and interests between the representative and his or her constituents is most likely to produce the effective representation desired. Thus, a representative gauging his or her level of responsiveness by considering constituents’ opinions in their voting behavior determines effectiveness (as opposed to responsiveness being a measure of electoral success in a competitively political environment).

A Brief History

Still, minority representation encompasses more than policy preferences. The history of race and minority representation has a long track record with the U.S. Congress and particularly the House of Representatives. The Congress has had an inconsistent and at times contradictory or ambivalent stance on minority representation issues since the drafting of one of the country’s founding documents, the Declaration of Independence. For example, the same institutional body that wrote that all men were created equal also sanctioned slavery and the institution of second-class citizenship. The same institutional body that guaranteed equal protection of the laws and said that all persons were entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of public accommodations stood largely silent when the U.S. Supreme Court legally sanctioned the concept of “separate but equal” accommodations in 1896. With the brief exception being the historical period of Reconstruction following the Civil War (1861–1865), not until the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 did Congress begin to establish a more consistent record of at least responding on the basis of preexisting law to the representation of minority interests in the United States.

A Look Toward The Future

More often than not, the protection of minority rights that are established in the 1868 ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment has been applied in a limited way to groups other than African Americans and Latinos. However, the U.S. Congress will be continually pressured to apply its previous protections of minority rights to an increasingly powerful number of American minority groups that extend beyond the realm of race and ethnicity with a look toward the global future.

Bibliography:

Bositis, David A., ed. Redistricting and Minority Representation. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1998.
Brunell,Thomas L. Redistricting and Representation. New York: Routledge, 2008.
Canon, David T. Race, Redistricting, and Representation: The Unintended Consequences of Black Majority Districts. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.
Lublin, David. The Paradox of Representation. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997.
Whitby, Kenny J. The Color of Representation. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press, 1997.

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