Not long ago, the struggle between racial liberalism and racial conservatism was a battle fought inside the Democratic and Republican parties. Now it’s a battle fought between the parties.
Even with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris at the top of the Democratic ticket, the importance of ethnicity and race in American politics is growing, not diminishing.
As African-Americans and other racial minorities increasingly occupy positions of influence and authority in American society, they also face backlash from those on the right whose opposition to ceding power is fierce, whether their opposition is veiled or out in the open. This opposition is now lodged solidly in the contemporary Republican Party, and the two parties regularly confront each other with rising intensity over the issue.
The many sources of frustration for Black Americans are evident in “The Economic State of Black America in 2020,” a report released on Feb. 14 by Representative Don Beyer, Democrat of Virginia and vice chair of the Joint Economic Committee.
Among its findings:
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Black household income grew from 1980 to 2018 by over $11,000 annually in inflation adjusted dollars, but whites did even better. In 2,018, “for every dollar earned by the typical white household, the typical Black household earned only 59 cents. This is significantly worse than in 2000, when the typical Black household earned about 65 cents for every dollar earned by a White household.”
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Racial disparities are largest for the most successful: both the racial pay-gap and the racial wealth gap are “largest for college graduates.” Whites with degrees made $60,000 in 2018 compared with $49,000 for African-Americans.
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Less than “half of Black families own their homes (42 percent), compared with nearly three-quarters of white families (73 percent). This is a significant decline from the peak Black homeownership rate of 49 percent in 2004.”
With virtually all opinion polls suggesting that the Biden-Harris team is at present positioned to win — 7.6 points ahead at RealClearPolitics, with FiveThirtyEight putting the odds of a Biden victory at 73 to 27 — Trump and the Republican Party are pulling out the heavy artillery.
The tactics they are using — targeted at voters of color and their supporters — include poll watchers to challenge ballots cast by minority voters, voter ID requirements, a tooth-and-nail fight against voting by mail, a war against the Postal Service and claims of voter fraud to lay the groundwork for discrediting, or refusing to acknowledge, the outcome of the election. Ron Brownstein summarized this strategy perfectly in The Atlantic as the “weaponization of the federal government.”
Fanning the flames of racial animosity lies at the core of Trump’s election strategy, as it did in 2016.
In their 2019 paper, “The Increasing Racialization of American Electoral Politics, 1988-2016,” Adam M. Enders and Jamil S. Scott, political scientists at the University of Louisville and Georgetown, found that
The relationships between racial resentment and partisan and ideological self-identifications, evaluations of the major party presidential candidates, and attitudes about health insurance and governmental services have strengthened each subsequent year beginning in 1988 through 2016.
Enders and Scott look first at statistics:
The marginal effect of racial resentment on partisan self-identifications increased from 0.01 in 1988 to 0.14 in 2016, and the same effect on ideological self-identifications increased from 0.05 to 0.12 over the same time period.
Enders expanded on the numbers in an email:
The strength of the relationship between racial resentment and partisanship increased by more than 600 percent from 1988-2016, while the relationship between racial resentment and ideological self-identifications more than doubled, increasing 177 percent. Moreover, the strength of the relationship between racial resentment and partisanship actually eclipsed that between racial resentment and ideology, the former starting weaker and ending stronger than the latter.
“Race relations and racism have emerged as a focus of American politics in the last twenty years unlike at any time since the Civil Rights movement,” Herbert Kitschelt, a political scientist at Duke, wrote in an email.
He went on:
The lack of progress in the incorporation and equalization of African Americans is the broad background condition, put into ever starker relief in the aftermath of the Great Recession. The rise of white Evangelicals on the Republican side — with white Christian churches being one of the most racially segregated sectors of voluntary associations — has profoundly deepened the racial divide.
As the share of whites in the population steadily declines, the demographic impact is significant.
In August 2014, Education Week reported that
This fall, for the first time, the overall number of Latino, African-American, and Asian students in public K-12 classrooms is expected to surpass the number of non-Hispanic whites. The new collective majority of minority schoolchildren — projected to be 50.3 percent by the National Center for Education Statistics — is driven largely by dramatic growth in the Latino population and a decline in the white population, and, to a lesser degree, by a steady rise in the number of Asian-Americans. African-American growth has been mostly flat.
In a June 2019 report, Pew found that the “U.S. foreign-born population reached a record 44.4 million in 2017.” From 1970 to 2017, the immigrant share of the population grew from 4.7 to 13.6 percent.
The intensity of the conflict between the two parties over demographic change has been a driving force shaping politics, often in ways that on the surface seem peripheral to race.
Asked to describe how the politics of today compare to the politics of 1988, when Biden first ran for president, Sean Westwood, a political scientist at Dartmouth, replied that what stands out to him
is how animosity is driving the current versions of both parties. The electorate in 1988 was far more likely to view the other side with respect. Voters believed that both candidates sought to better the American way of life. Contrast this with today’s candidates who are both focused on corralling anger to their advantage, with Biden searching for those angry with Trump and Trump searching for angry middle-class whites.
Over the past three-plus decades, the Democratic Party has been on the leading edge of change, one step or more ahead of the nation as a whole.
Democrats have become decisively more liberal, especially on cultural issues; more dependent on states on the East and West Coasts; more diverse; more ideologically orthodox, less religious, less white; and in many cases more highly educated.
“The race and religion gap jumps out to me, specifically white Christians vs. everyone else,” Ryan Burge, a political scientist at Eastern Illinois University, wrote in an email describing how the parties have changed in recent decades.
While “the Republican Party doesn’t look terribly different than it did in the 1980s: about 88 percent were white Christians in 1984; in 2018, it’s still 75 percent.”
In contrast, the Democrats have changed radically, Burge continued: “About 68 percent of Democrats were white Christians in 1984, today it’s 38 percent.”
From 1991 to 2018, the share of Democrats who describe themselves as religiously unaffiliated has grown from 10 percent to 38 percent. While a majority of Democrats say they believe in God, the party has become the home on nonbelievers.
In an interview with The Times, Robert P. Jones, founder and C.E.O. of the Public Religion Research Institute, described in blunt terms the underlying rationale for the alliance between the Republican Party and white evangelicals: “The new culture war is not abortion or same-sex marriage, the new culture war is about preserving a white, Christian America,” Jones said, adding
That’s what Trump’s really leading with. The "Make America Great Again” thing — the way that was heard by most white evangelical Protestants, white working-class folks, was saying: “I’m going to preserve the composition of the country.”
In an email, Jones wrote
As the Republican Party has continued to remain fairly homogeneous and has organized itself, fueled by decades of deploying the so-called Southern Strategy, around a politics of white racial grievances, the Democratic Party has become the default party for those who do not share those grievances and has come to more closely reflect the changing demographics of the country. As a result, the Democratic coalition, in terms of race and religion, is notably more diverse today than it was when Biden first ran for president in 1988. And issues of religious and racial identity are more salient today in defining the partisan divides.
As the share of white Christians has eroded within the Democratic Party, the share of Democrats describing themselves as liberal has more than doubled. In 1994, only a quarter of Democrats described themselves as liberal. An equal share called themselves conservatives, and 48 percent said they were moderates according to Gallup.
Today, the party has moved decisively leftward in terms of ideological self-identification. By the start of 2020, Gallup found that 53 percent of Democrats called themselves liberal, while self-identified Democratic conservatives had shrunk to 11 percent and moderates fell to 35 percent.
White Democrats are driving an increase in liberal self-identification: over the past 20 years, Gallup found that the percentage of white Democrats who said they were liberal grew by 20 points, from 34 to 54 percent. For Black Democrats, the increase was 9 points, from 29 to 38 percent, and for Hispanic Democrats, the increase was 8 points, from 25 to 33 percent.
In 1992, six out of ten Democrats had only a high school degrees or less, while 17 percent had taken some college courses and 24 percent had college degrees. 26 percent of Republican voters had degrees
Since then, the Democrats have eclipsed Republicans as the party of the college-educated. The percentage of Democrats with college degrees grew from 22 to 37 percent, from 1999 to 2019, according to Pew. Over the same period, the percentage of Republicans with college degrees barely changed, growing by one point to 27 percent.
Crucial to the changing ideology and demographics of the Democratic electorate is the geographic shift in the base of the Party.
Compared with the Democratic Party of today, the Democratic Party of 30 years ago was geographically dispersed, and not concentrated on the two coasts. Look at the map of the 1992 election, with a sea of blue states in the Midwest and four that had been part of the confederacy.
In the presidential election of 2016, all of the Midwest except for Minnesota and Illinois turned red, along with 10 of the 11 Confederate states.
Southern and midwestern states that voted for Clinton in 1992 went to Trump in 2016
Southern and midwestern states that voted for Clinton in 1992 went to Trump in 2016
States are sized by their number of electoral votes.
1992
N.Y.
Pa.
Mich.
Wis.
N.J.
Va.
Ind.
Ill.
Ohio
Md.
Mo.
Calif.
N.C.
Ky.
Ala.
La.
Ga.
Texas
Fla.
Alaska
Hawaii
2016
N.Y.
Pa.
Mich.
Wis.
N.J.
Va.
Ind.
Md.
Ill.
Ohio
Mo.
Ariz.
Calif.
N.C.
Ky.
La.
Ala.
Ga.
Texas
Fla.
Alaska
Hawaii
1992
N.Y.
Mass.
Minn.
Pa.
Mich.
Wis.
N.J.
Ore.
Va.
Ind.
Ill.
Ohio
Md.
Mo.
Ariz.
Colo.
Calif.
Tenn.
Ark.
N.C.
Ky.
Ala.
La.
Ga.
Texas
Fla.
Alaska
Hawaii
2016
N.Y.
Mass.
Minn.
Pa.
Mich.
Wis.
N.J.
Ore.
Va.
Ind.
Md.
Ill.
Ohio
Mo.
Ariz.
Colo.
Calif.
Tenn.
N.C.
Ky.
Ark.
La.
Ala.
Ga.
Texas
Fla.
Alaska
Hawaii
1992
2016
N.Y.
N.Y.
Mass.
Mass.
Minn.
Minn.
Pa.
Pa.
Mich.
Mich.
Wis.
Wis.
N.J.
N.J.
Ore.
Ore.
Va.
Va.
Ind.
Ind.
Md.
Ill.
Ill.
Ohio
Ohio
Mo.
Md.
Mo.
Ariz.
Ariz.
Colo.
Colo.
Calif.
Calif.
Tenn.
Tenn.
N.C.
Ky.
Ark.
Ark.
N.C.
Ky.
La.
Ala.
Ala.
La.
S.C.
Ga.
Ga.
Texas
Texas
Fla.
Fla.
Alaska
Hawaii
Alaska
Hawaii
The same regional shift has taken place in the House of Representatives, as can be seen in this comparison of the partisan distribution of seats in 2008 and 2018, posted at the website of the Brookings Institution, a center-left think tank:
These shifts have resulted in a growing economic divergence between the regions where Democrats dominate and where Republicans rule the roost.
Democrats have lost ground in non-urban, inland congressional districts
Democrats have lost ground in non-urban, inland congressional districts
111th Congress
Elected in 2008
116th Congress
Elected in 2018
111th Congress
Elected in 2008
116th Congress
Elected in 2018
111th Congress
Elected in 2008
116th Congress
Elected in 2018
“Basically the two parties have in just 10 years gone from near-parity on prosperity and income measures to stark, fast-moving divergence,” Mark Muro, a senior fellow at Brookings, wrote by email:
With their output surging as a result of the big-city tilt of the decade’s ‘winner-take-most’ economy, Democratic districts have seen their medium household income soar in a decade — from $54,000 in 2008 to $61,000 in 2018. By contrast, the income level in Republican districts began slightly higher in 2008, but then declined from $55,000 to $53,000.
Take productivity, a key economic measure. “Overall, ‘blue’ territories have seen their productivity climb from $118,000 per worker in 2008 to $139,000 in 2018,” Muro wrote. “Republican-district productivity, by contrast, remains stuck at about $110,000.”
In just a decade, Democratic-voting districts, according to Muro’s analysis, “have seen their share of adults with at least a bachelor’s degree rise from 28.4 percent 2008 to 35.5 percent” while voters in Republican districts “have barely increased their bachelor’s degree attainment beyond 26.6 percent and have meanwhile become notably whiter and older.”
While more complex analytically, one of the most significant developments in recent years is the decline of what political professionals call “cross-pressured voters." Christopher Warshaw, a political scientist at George Washington University, described this phenomenon in an email:
At the mass level, people in the two parties have become much more sorted ideologically during this time period. For instance, in the 1980s, there were many pro-life Democrats and pro-choice Republicans, whereas today the vast majority of pro-choice people are Democrats and pro-life people are Republicans.
Along similar lines, Warshaw wrote,
People are much more ‘one-dimensional’ in their preferences today. That is, there used to be many people that were liberals on economic issues and conservatives on cultural issues such as abortion or race (or vice versa). But today most people have views that largely fall upon a single ideological/partisan continuum. So if you’re liberal on cultural/social issues you’re probably also liberal on most economic issues.
Warshaw, writing with Devin Caughey and James Dunham, political scientists at M.I.T., describe what they call “the ideological nationalization” of politics. They found that in the 1950s, the economic conservatism of voters and elected officials was “unrelated to their racial and social conservatism.”
Among Senators, these “three domains had become roughly equally correlated by 1970” and, moving more slowly, “by the 2000s, mass conservatism was just as highly correlated.”
In other words, conservatism and liberalism both became one dimensional — consistent across economics, race and sociocultural issues:
By century’s end, conservatism at both levels had become highly correlated across domains. The primary difference between elite and mass trends is that ideological conflict collapsed to one dimension earlier in the Senate than in the public.
Kitschelt, whom I cited above, described this trend in different terms:
Political scientists like to compare the effect of “mutually reinforcing” and “crosscutting” divides in a polity, with the typical hypothesis being that crosscutting divides contain and dampen societal conflict, while mutually reinforcing divides deepen it.
In recent years, Kitschelt continued,
political divisions in the United States became progressively less crosscutting than reinforcing and have now configured the country into two warlike camps, with deep mutual hatred and anger, more so than at any time since the Civil War.
In one camp, he wrote are the
highly educated; postindustrial economic sectors; nonreligious/atheist or non-Christian religion; almost all ethnic minorities; sympathy with non-heterosexual orientations; the more urban than rural; the distinctively younger; and the slightly more female, particularly if single.
In the opposing camp are the
less educated; industrial and agro-/extractive industries economic sectors; evangelical Christians; European stock whites; heterosexuals; the more rural than urban; the distinctively older; the slightly more male, particularly if married.
While left and right have multiple concerns, among the most prominent of these is race and its first cousin immigration, and both of these concerns have become more and more central to partisan politics.
Democrats twice nominated and the nation elected Barack Obama as its first Black president. On Wednesday night, the party will nominate Kamala Harris for vice president, the first woman of color — Indian-American and African-American — on a national party ticket. As never before, Democratic racial liberalism is challenging Republican racial conservatism. The election will not bring this conflict to an end, but the outcome will determine whether the nation moves forward or backward in the struggle to realize the promise of full equality that has been central to the country since its founding.
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