Black and Latino/a Politics: Editor's Introduction

In the twenty-first century, the demography of U.S. cities is changing at a rapid clip. The number of major U.S. cities with White majorities continues to significantly decline, while majority-minority cities are increasingly becoming the dominant population mode. These patterns have fostered persistent calls for the formation of Black and Latino biracial coalitions. It is presumed that such conditions would be beneficial for both groups: Blacks would benefit from an expansion of the political and economic resource base available to Black leaders, and Latinos would benefit from opportunities for increased political socialization and policy networking within important arenas of governmental decision-making. The chapters in Part VI suggest an array of problems associated with the formation and maintenance of Black-Latino coalitions. Karen M. Kaufmann’s chapter draws attention to the tendency on the part of Blacks and Latinos to view their interests in zero sum terms. Issues centering on perceptions of status inequality have often discouraged political activists representing the interests of both groups from pursuing coalitional objectives. This fact has enormous implications for minority political empowerment in cities like New York and Chicago, where Blacks and Latinos are in competition for scarce social, economic, and political resources. In a complementary fashion, the later chapters by Byron D’Andra Orey and Jessica Lavariega Monforti examine the impacts of inter-minority group attitudes on public opinion concerning public policies dealing with issues of race and ethnicity. They consider theories of competition and racial threat as they analyze Black attitudes regarding Latino immigration and Hispanic attitudes regarding affirmative action. The chapter by Sharon D. Wright Austin and Richard T. Middleton, IV analyzes the consequences that ensue when a Latino mayoral candidate in a multiethnic city like Los Angeles is unable to rally mass support from Black voters through the formation of an effective electoral alliance between Blacks and Latinos. The chapter by Adrian D. Pantoja suggests that friction between Blacks and Latinos may originate, in part, from Black perceptions of Latino immigrants as serious threats to their social and economic position in society. As the political development process evolves in major cities in the United States, a crucial arena of social policy analysis will be the extent to which Blacks and Latinos can find sufficient common ground to forge cooperative power relations in the political process.