A Theory of Black Political Participation in the United States

Abstract

Recently indirect effects, isolation, and ethnic community arguments have been offered to explain the political participation rates of black Americans. Each of these theories is criticized on the basis of both contemporary and historical evidence and because of the severely limiting assumptions underlying the arguments. In their stead, a political climate theory of participation is presented as a defensible alternative. Historical support is offered, underlying assumptions are discussed, and alternative methods of testing the thesis are suggested. For at least half a century, discussions of black political participation in the U.S. have arisen out of political research on cities (e.g., Gosnell; Olsen; Orum; Wilson), specific geographic regions (e.g., Matthews and Prothro), and representative samples from the country as a whole (e.g., A. Campbell et al.; Connelly and Field; Greeley; Lazarsfeld et al.; Woodward and Roper). Especially since World War 2, all investigations of black politics have benefited from the application of computer technology and relatively sophisticated techniques of data analysis to problems in the social sciences. Advanced methods of investigation notwithstanding, the twofold thesis of this paper is that contemporary and historical evidence show the theoretical arguments emanating from this research to be particularly narrow and limited in their application and that a historically based theory of black participation which incorporates the strengths and avoids the limitations of these contemporary arguments can be constructed. Before the evidence for these assertions is presented, however, the meaning of political participation in this paper should be clarified. While politics has come to be interpreted broadly-and rightfully so-a necessary first step toward any theory of black politics ought to examine carefully the much studied but little understood phenomenon of minority voting and its relation to conventional political behavior. By itself, voting by blacks is often not sufficient to effect lasting social change, but in the recent past, at *Special thanks to Wen-lung Chang and Peter Yeager both for helpful insights offered about important aspects of the paper and for moral support.