Opinions

Looking for diversity? Don't look to the Senate

In print | March 5, 2009

It’s not going out on a limb to predict that Roland Burris will not be a senator for much longer. When he leaves, it is an unfortunate fact that America will be back where it was at the start of 2009: with no African-Americans represented in the U.S. Senate.

This is, of course, the way it has been throughout America’s history. Of the thousands of Senators in American history, six have been black. Since Reconstruction, the only African-American Senators have been Edward Brooke, Carol Moseley Braun, Barack Obama and Roland Burris — and these last three have all held the same Illinois Senate seat.

The problem is just as bleak when you look at governors. Adding together the durations of all the African-American governorships in America’s 220-year history, black governors have led states for a grand total of exactly seven years. Before Douglas Wilder’s election as Virginia’s chief executive in 1989, the entire history of African-American governorship consisted of the 35 days in the 1870s when P.B.S. Pinchback was governor of Louisiana.

This is shameful, but for anybody who has the least knowledge of American history, it may be sadly unsurprising.

This is not only a problem for African-Americans. For example, although there were three Latino Senators at the start of 2009, there were none in 2000, and in 2011 there will likely be just one remaining. Meanwhile, diversity of gender, religion, and sexuality are also strongly lacking , in some cases drastically.

For this column, I’m going to focus specifically on the lack of African-American senators.
One thing to keep in mind, however, is that many of the same obstacles face other underrepresented groups, at other levels of office.

Without a question, racism, both personal and institutional, has been the biggest barrier. It is not, however, the only factor involved. There’s plenty of blame to go around that stretches from our schools to our constitution to our parties, so let’s start blaming.

Let’s start with some statistics. The vast majority of senators — including 90 percent of the current Senate — have already held elective office. More than a quarter have already been elected statewide, including the 11 former governors who are currently senators. The disproportionately low representation of African-Americans at other levels of elective office, then, means that representation will likely decrease as politicians aim for higher offices.

Education is relevant: 99 out of 100 Senators hold bachelors degrees or higher. Meanwhile, less than two percent of the adult population is comprised of African-Americans with these degrees, while nearly 20 percent is comprised of white college graduates. The gap widens for older cohorts, so it is more dramatic when we consider only those eligible for election to the Senate (at age 30).

Wealth is a factor. Dozens of U.S. senators are millionaires, and personal wealth clearly helps people get elected in competitive races. It should come as no surprise that white millionaires outnumber black millionaires by a large margin — a good lowball estimate seems to be around 20-to-1, and the number may be much higher.

So right from the start, we have a problem: African-Americans are disproportionately unlikely to have some of the background factors which are highly predictive of membership in the U.S. Senate. I’ve talked about prior office, education and wealth, but I’m sure that with more research similar statistics could be found with other factors – things like parental education, family structure, etc.

But this doesn’t solve the puzzle entirely — although these statistics should diminish the predicted numbers of black senators, they certainly don’t explain why the number might be ZERO by the end of 2009. Let’s keep looking.

The incomparable Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com sees political factors as extremely important. Silver starts with two important trends: first, all current African-American congressmen represent districts that are significantly more African-American than the nation as a whole; and second, African-Americans tend to be more consistently Democratic than the rest of the nation.

The result of these trends is that, to win election, most black representatives must play to a constituency very different than the one they would have to win over in a statewide election. Making this pivot is certainly possible, but politically tricky. Since nearly half of all senators are former congressmen, anything that makes it harder for a congressman to get elected to the Senate is important here.

Why African-American congressmen tend to only be elected in districts that are disproportionately black brings up its own range of issues — some are the same as those facing senators (like educational and economic backgrounds and racism), while others are unique to the House (gerrymandering).

Another important issue is the structure of American elections. Unlike many other democracies, the United States doesn’t have a system of proportional representation (PR), where congressional seats are assigned based on party results in a nationwide election.

Why would a PR system encourage greater representation of African-Americans? In most PR systems, each party publishes a list of politicians affiliated with their party; as they win seats, those seats are assigned to people on their list. There tends to be a pressure on parties in a PR system to diversify their lists in proportion to overall population: any party whose list is not sufficiently diverse may face criticism and backlash.

This pressure doesn’t exist in America’s political system. In fact, the biggest pressure on our political parties goes in the opposite direction. Each party has an incentive to support whichever candidate they think will be most likely to win in November.

A party can bemoan the lack of black candidates nationwide while supporting a white candidate locally without serious repercussions.

I could go on and on listing obstacles. The main point I am trying to get across is that although racism is almost certainly the central factor, it is enmeshed with many institutional and political factors — ones that persist even in the so-called “Age of Obama.”

On the one hand, these factors present a daunting barrier. On the other hand, steps like education or campaign reforms — things we should be considering anyway — might also cut aside some of these important barriers.

Electing President Obama was a huge step. But in 2011, the Senate will likely be less diverse than it was in 2008. We’ve got a long way to go.

Jesse is a senior. You can reach him at jgotts1@swarthmore.edu.