The Racial Factor in Urban Elections

Abstract

N ' UMEROUS scholars have commented on the growing import of racial and ethnic divisions in contemporary urban politics (Harrigan 1981; Judd 1979). Historically, the primary instruments for assimilating the nation's ethnic and racial minorities have been the cities. With their large and growing underclasses, however, the cities appear to have been more successful in fulfilling this function for earlier immigrants than more recent arrivals (Glazer and Moynihan 1970). Today, urban politics is fraught with some of the most perplexing and intractable issues that confront a liberal democracy; namely, racial segregation, social exclusion, and political fragmentation. These issues now appear to challenge a key objective of the pluralist dream; i.e., the development of an integrated society cemented by the bonds of economic self-interest and material progress. For instead of emphasizing the economic and social problems that residents share in common, much urban politics revolves around the racial, ethnic, and cultural divisions that separate them (Elazar 1970). Thus, while national politics has generally been dominated by distributive economic issues, urban politics has been more preoccupied with the distribution of spatial turf, social access, and cultural life styles (Williams 1967). And to the extent issues are important in urban elections, they are generally the visceral valence issues of tribal membership rather than the rational position issues of the social welfare state (Orren 1979). In order to mute the social tensions and political conflicts that abound at the urban level, and to promote a unitary concept of the city, structural reformers have traditionally relied on a variety of electoral reforms. The primary vehicles of reform have been the introduction of at-large districts, nonpartisan ballots, off-year elections, and multimember races. Though these institutions have doubtlessly worked to reduce the influence of partisan differences, they have also served to reinforce the inherent racial, ethnic, and cultural fragmentation of urban politics. For in an electoral setting of low political information, a lack of media attention, and the absence or reduction of voting cues provided by partisan politics, what else is left to invoke political trust other than racial and ethnic identities and social group memberships? This political context implies a far different voting calculus than those which are normally assumed by partisan voting models at the national and state levels (Campbell, Converse, Miller, and Stokes 1960; Kovenock, Prothro, and Beardsley 1973; Miller, Miller, Raine, and Brown 1976;