Racial Analysis in American Politics

Charles Lane of the Washington Post has a column today in which he opines about how the parties in the USA are becoming racial in composition. According to Lane, the GOP is becoming all white while the Democrats are becoming mostly minorities.

This is the kind of nonsense that actually contributes to racism in America in my opinion. As a result, I sent the following email to Lane this morning.

Dear Mr. Lane:

Your column on the “racialization” of American political parties is about four years too late. The “demography is destiny” movement in political analysis peaked in 2009 after the election of president Obama and the proclaimed demise of the GOP due to the demographic decline of its voter base. That analysis carried the day in the political press for at least a year until the Democrats were destroyed in the 2010 elections by the supposedly moribund GOP.

The real truth is that for the last 50 years at least there have been pundits who have studied election trends and declared one party or the other to have hegemony for the future. Do you remember “The Emerging Republican Majority” by Kevin Phillips? How about the predictions of the demise of the GOP after the Clinton victory in 1992? The point here is that all of these folks were wrong. Political parties and political coalitions change. There are inherent schisms in the coalitions that are sometimes papered over and sometimes break blocs apart. Think of the Keystone Pipeline. How many unions support that construction, and how many environmental groups oppose it? The pipeline is hardly likely to split the Democrats in two this year, but the future tension between affluent environmentalists and poorer workers needing jobs is likely to grow, not shrink as we move forward. On the Republican side, think of the conflict between the libertarians and those who want the state to ban “immoral” behavior. Will Romney lose support if he opposes legalization of marijuana? I doubt it will happen in 2012, but that split is clearly there in the DNA of the Republican coalition.

To speak of the racialization of the parties is actually to make the rather demeaning and, in my opinion, racist calculation that “all _______s think alike.” You can insert whatever group you want in that blank. I just do not buy it. For example, you mention the Hispanic vote. Is that the Cuban Hispanic vote in Florida which is strongly Republican? Is that the Mexican Hispanic vote in California which is strongly Democrat? How about the Dominicans in New York who vote Democrat but whose percentage of support for the Democrats declines as the voter moves farther down the chain from immigrant status? Not all Hispanics vote alike. Nor do all Asians. Nor, for that matter, do all whites. Indeed, in American history, there has never been a racial group that voted as a unit for the long term. If you are about to tell me that blacks have done so, I would suggest that you look at the history of voting by blacks which was heavily Republican for decades after the Civil War, and which then went to a much closer split for decades. Remember that Richard Nixon got around 40% of the black vote in 1960.

My guess is that by the election of 2020, nearly everything that you have written in your column will have changed. Indeed, that really is change you can believe in. To announce the “racialization” of the American political scene is the just the sort of pseudo-intellectual analysis that does a great deal of harm by promoting racism, an “us versus them” view of the country. I suggest that you stop.


Let's see if Lane responds.