Broadening the Narrative: Systemic Racism Series: Politics

Estimated Reading Time: 15 minutes

(TW: There are references to violence against Black people contained in this month’s blog post.)

Lisa Sharon Harper wrote, “Why does the federal government ask for the nations of origin for Asian and Latino people, tribal affiliation for American Indian people, and include ‘African American’ (a specific ethnic group within the racial category ‘black’) but does not ask ‘white’ people to identify their ethnicity or nation of origin? It’s because of power. The only racial category on the national census that did not change from 1790 to 2010 was ‘white.’ In the United States, whiteness is the centerpiece around which all else revolves. That was and is intentional. In 1751, Benjamin Franklin argued to the British ministry that due to the shrinking percentage of white people on earth, America should be kept an exclusively Anglo-Saxon colony to protect the race. In the years following the establishment of our nation, the founders followed Franklin’s lead and white became the identity of power. Race is inherently about power, and whiteness was created to define who would wield it” (Harper, 2016, pp. 149-150 in The Very Good Gospel).

I am continuing in the systemic racism series here on the Broadening the Narrative blog. To learn more about this series, you can read the first thirteen posts. I am learning and sharing as a learner, not as a teacher or an expert. Today’s post addresses systemic racism in politics.

Data

Let’s examine who dominates politics, thereby shaping policies and public opinion, as well as tactics of voter suppression.

Politicians

- US Congress: According to the CNBC article “These two charts show the lack of diversity in the House and Senate” by John W. Schoen and Yelena Dzhanova, “The House has become more diverse at a faster rate than the Senate, a CNBC analysis shows, but both chambers are still predominantly white...Here is a breakdown of the number of people in Congress by race: African American: 53 representatives, 3 senators; Asian American: 12 representatives, 3 senators; Hispanic American: 39 representatives, 4 senators...The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that in 2019, 60.4% of Americans identified as white only, excluding those who identified as Hispanic or Latino. But about 79% of Congress is white, according to the Brookings data.”

- US governors: On the Rutgers University Center for Youth Political Participation “American Governors 2019” page, it’s reported that, “Almost 88 percent of the Governors currently serving in office are White/Caucasian.”

- Current president and vice president: Donald Trump and Mike Pence are white. (This post was published December 20, 2020. Joe Biden is the president-elect and Kamala Harris is the vice president-elect.)

- Current presidential cabinet: Jasmine C. Lee wrote in the NY Times article “Trump’s Cabinet So Far Is More White and Male Than Any First Cabinet Since Reagan’s,” “If Mr. Trump’s remaining nominees are confirmed, women and nonwhites will hold six of 24 cabinet or cabinet-level positions.” The Washington Post article “Trump’s entire Cabinet is now confirmed” provides more information on Trump’s cabinet-level nominees.

Tom McCarthy wrote in The Guardian article “‘Democracy has been hijacked by white men’: how minority rule now grips America,” “White men hold 65% of elected seats nationally, according to the Reflective Democracy Campaign. About half of all federal judges (but more than 70% of Donald Trump nominees) are white men.” The Who Leads Us? site reveals that 90% of elected officials are white.

Clearly, Black, Brown, Indigenous, Asian American, and Pacific Islander people are underrepresented in positions of power with decision-making authority in the United States. This isn’t because there are less qualified Black, Brown, Indigenous, Asian American, and Pacific Islander people or because they aren’t running for public offices.

Voting

Voter suppression didn’t end with the passage of civil rights acts. Daniel Garisto explained in the Scientific American article “Smartphone Data Show Voters in Black Neighborhoods Wait Longer,” “Voters in predominantly black neighborhoods waited 29 percent longer, on average, than those in white neighborhoods. They were also about 74 percent more likely to wait for more than half an hour...Previous studies have found that some areas—often those that are nonwhite—lack the resources to properly accommodate their voters. But in a 2016 study, [Robert] Stein and his colleagues did find one particular culprit for long lines: voter ID laws...Areas with minority voters—who are less likely to have an ID—tend to be most affected by these laws, Stein says. The past decade has seen numerous challenges to voting, including gerrymandering (manipulating districts in a way that politically disenfranchises some voters), voter-roll purges (challenging people’s registration status to keep them from voting), and, in 2016, targeted disinformation campaigns to suppress black voters.”

In the Brennan Center for Justice article “The New Voter Suppression,” Theodore R. Johnson and Max Feldman reported, “Look at North Dakota: a federal district court found that, when the state enacted its current ID law in 2017, 19 percent of Native Americans lacked qualifying ID compared to less than 12 percent of other potential voters. Likewise, Texas permits voters to use a handgun license to vote, but not a student ID from a state university. More than 80 percent of handgun licenses issued to Texans in 2018 went to white Texans, while more than half of the students in the University of Texas system are racial or ethnic minorities.”

In The Guardian article “How Native Americans’ right to vote has been systematically violated for generations,” Nina Lakhani reported, “The rights of indigenous communities – including the right to vote – have been systematically violated for generations with devastating consequences for access to clean air and water, health, education, economic opportunities, housing and sovereignty. Voter turnout for Native Americans and Alaskan Natives is the lowest in the country, and about one in three eligible voters (1.2 million people) are not registered to vote, according to the National Congress of American Indians.”

Suzanne Gamboa reported in the NBC article “Racism, not a lack of assimilation, is the real problem facing Latinos in America,” “The narrative that Latinos are choosing not to take their place in American society does not take into account the pushback they face when they try to do so. Today, for example, Latino voters are described as a sleeping giant with the potential to make a major political impact if only they went out and voted. But this argument fails to include the attempts that can make it harder for Latinos to vote, whether through strict voter ID laws or recent attempts to question voters who are on the rolls. Gerrymandering, the drawing of electoral district lines to keep particular groups together, has packed growing Hispanic populations into fewer districts, diluting their voting strength.”

History

To see how we got here, let’s examine the history of politics in the United States.

Politicians

In The Guardian article “‘Democracy has been hijacked by white men’: how minority rule now grips America” referenced above, Tom McCarthy wrote, “The white male grip on power is also deeply entrenched, and well-insulated by historical design. It was written into the constitution, secured by the enslavement of African Americans and an economy and society built on slavery, and promulgated by generations of reinforcement and denial.”

According to the EJI report Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror, “In Louisiana in 1872, P.B.S. Pinchback became the first Black governor in America (and would be the last until 1990). The Reconstruction states sent sixteen Black representatives to the United States Congress, and Mississippi voters elected the nation’s first Black senators: Hiram Revels and Blanche Bruce...In the face of Black political and economic competition created by emancipation and progressive Reconstruction, white backlash worked to re-impose white dominance through violent repression. In 1868, white Democrats angered by growing Black support for white Republican candidates in St. Landry Parish, Louisiana, terrorized the local Black community in two weeks of attacks that left more than a hundred Black people dead...Without federal protection, Black voters were targeted in brutal attacks on election day in Mississippi and throughout the South.”

Prior to the election of Donald Trump, there has only been one Black president with the election of Barack Obama. With the election of Kamala Harris, she will become the first Black person, the first South Asian American person, and only the second person of color to hold the vice president position. Charles Curtis was the first person of color and first and only person of Native American ancestry to hold the office of vice president from 1929 to 1933. Christine Hauser wrote in the NY Times article “Before Harris, This Vice President Broke a Racial Barrier,” “In October, reporting on Ms. Harris’s preparations for a debate, the news site Indian Country Today noted that at least two Native Americans had sought the vice presidency in recent decades. One was LaDonna Harris, a Comanche citizen, a candidate for the Citizens Party in 1980 with Barry Commoner; the other, Winona LaDuke, of White Earth Nation, was the Green Party nominee for vice president in 1996 and 2000, alongside Ralph Nader. Laura Harris, LaDonna Harris’s daughter, said in an interview on Monday that she and her mother discovered more about Mr. Curtis while preparing for her campaign. ‘You want people to know that we were politically active back in the 1800s, as well as today,’ she said. ‘And we have served in government and were included in government. But he is almost a fluke,’ she added.” Eli Watkins wrote in the article “First Native American women elected to Congress: Sharice Davids and Deb Haaland”, “In New Mexico, Haaland will replace Democratic Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham, who vacated the seat to run for governor, and Davids will unseat Kansas GOP Rep. Kevin Yoder. Davids is a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation and Haaland is an enrolled member of the Pueblo of Laguna, according to their respective campaigns. The projected victories for the two Native American women mark a milestone in the US political system.”

In the USA Today article “Latinos make up only 1% of all local and federal elected officials, and that’s a big problem,” Dianna M. Náñez reported, “In 1992, San Antonio-born Henry Bonilla was the first Hispanic Republican from Texas elected to Congress. And in 1981, Henry Cisneros became one of the first Latino mayors in the U.S. when he was elected by San Antonio voters. San Antonio had not had a Latino mayor since the 1800s, before Texas became a state. Later, Cisneros was appointed by former President Bill Clinton as U.S. secretary of Housing and Urban Development.”

According to the History, Art & Archives page “Asian and Pacific Islander Americans in Congress,” “Since 1900, when Delegate Robert M. Wilcox of Hawaii became the first Asian Pacific American (APA) to serve in Congress, a total of 63 APAs have served as U.S. Representatives, Delegates, Resident Commissioners, or Senators.” The site contains the member profiles of these 63 people as well as a more detailed history divided into “Exclusion and Empire, 1898-1941,” “From Exclusion to Inclusion, 1941-1992,” and “A Growing Diversity, 1993-2017.”

Voting

Lisa Sharon Harper wrote in The Very Good Gospel, “In 1767, Swedish Botanist Carl Linnaeus, founder of botany's taxonomy of fauna, published the twelfth edition of his Systema Naturae, which defined the first taxonomy of human social hierarchy based on skin color. Twenty years later, the US Congress made official what the courts of the American colonies had already established by precedent. The newly formed United States of America enacted the racialization of power. Congress passed the three-fifths compromise, which increased the number of members in the House of Representatives who represented districts in the slave states. Congress determined that each enslaved person would be counted as three-fifths of a human being. Congress members from the North had argued that slaves should not be factored into the populations of slave states. With the compromise, however, Congress declared that black people would be counted, but as less than human. Three years later Northerners got their way on the first national census in 1790. Enslaved black people were listed as chattel - nonhuman property - along with pitchforks and horses. In the same year, Congress passed the Naturalization Act of 1790, which declared that only free white men could become naturalized citizens. This was significant because only citizens can vote, and voting is the most basic form of the exercise of dominion...With this law in place, for the next century new immigrants to the United States could be legally categorized as white. In 1922, the US Supreme Court heard the case of Mr. Takao Ozawa, a Japanese man who argued that Japanese people are white. Ozawa had been in the country for twenty years and wanted to become naturalized. He had been blocked by the Naturalization Act of 1906, which restricted naturalization to free white people and people of African descent. The court denied Ozawa’s claim to whiteness, and, with it, his chances of becoming a citizen” (Harper, 2016, pp. 147-148).

According to the EJI report Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror referenced above, “During Reconstruction, whites of diverse political affiliations declared voting a ‘privilege’ rather than a universal right, and even some whites who had opposed slavery were wary of measures that would lead to Black voting in the North.”

In the article “How Native Americans’ right to vote has been systematically violated for generations,” referenced above, Nina Lakhani interviewed Jean Reith Schroedel, who explained, “One thing few Americans understand is that American Indians and Native Alaskans were the last group in the United States to get citizenship and to get the vote. Even after the civil war and the Reconstruction (13th, 14th and 15th) amendments there was a supreme court decision that said indigenous people could never become US citizens, and some laws used to disenfranchise them were still in place in 1975. In fact first-generation violations used to deny – not just dilute voting rights – were in place for much longer for Native Americans than any other group. It’s impossible to understand contemporary voter suppression in Indian Country without understanding this historical context.”

In The Guardian article “In 1981 a ‘task force’ intimidated voters at the polls. Will Republicans revert to their old tactics?,” Ed Pilkington wrote, “The 2020 presidential election will be the first time since Ronald Reagan’s landslide victory against Jimmy Carter in 1980 that the RNC will be able to unleash ‘ballot security operations’ on election day entirely untrammeled. And the party will be allowed to freely coordinate with Donald Trump’s re-election campaign...The Brennan Center, a nonpartisan law and policy organization, has reviewed the research and concluded the whole idea of widespread cheating is a myth, including through mail-in ballots. Outside conservative groups are also floating ambitious plans ahead of November. True the Vote, a prominent advocate of the need for ‘ballot security’ measures that others denounce as intimidation, has been telling its supporters that it will stage a November exercise that echoes the 1981 use of armed off-duty police in New Jersey...Whether or not it is effective, the RNC’s rhetoric about sending armies of poll watchers to polling places on 3 November is designed to sow seeds of doubt in voters’ minds about the integrity and safety of the electoral process...Most recently, the president has openly admitted that he is undermining the US post office as a way of hampering mail-in voting, which he claims untruthfully is vulnerable to cheating.”

Finally, in the NBC article “Trump's election fight includes over 50 lawsuits. It's not going well,” Pete Williams and Nicole Via y Rada reported, “President Donald Trump and his allies have filed dozens of lawsuits across the country in an attempt to contest the election results. Most of them have been shot down or withdrawn, and no court has found even a single instance of fraud. Of at least 57 cases to have been filed, including some not directly involving Trump but which could nonetheless affect his standing, at least 50 have been denied, dismissed, settled or withdrawn. Trump has aggressively ramped up his allegations of election fraud in the weeks since his projected loss, tweeting dozens of debunked theories. Despite the Electoral College vote this week certifying Biden's victory, Trump has still not conceded. Just five cases remain active as of Dec. 17.”

For more information, you can read the National Low Income Housing Coalition publication “A History of Voter Suppression.”

Action Steps

Complete additional research on the topic of systemic racism in politics. There are numerous examples I did not address that are important such as the historical and current racist impacts of policies. I will link additional resources at the end of the post.

Have action that follows your research and reflection.

- Support continued policy changes that dismantle systemic racism by contacting local, state, and national elected officials.

In his book The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma, Bessel van der Kolk wrote, “I like to believe that once our society truly focuses on the needs of children, all forms of social support for families--a policy that remains so controversial in this country will gradually come to seem not only desirable but also doable. What difference would it make if all American children had access to high-quality day care where parents could safely leave their children as they went off to work or school? What would our school systems look like if all children could attend well-staffed preschools that cultivated cooperation, self-regulation, perseverance, and concentration (as opposed to focusing on passing tests, which will likely happen once children are allowed to follow their natural curiosity and desire to excel, and are not shut down by hopelessness, fear, and hyperarousal)?” (Van der Kolk, 2014, p. 350).

- Vote, show up, and engage in meaningful ways to dismantle systems of oppression. Do all of this under the leadership of Black, Brown, Indigenous, Asian/Asian American, and Pacific Islander People of Color.

What to Expect in Future Posts

At this time, I plan to address systemic racism as seen in the Christian church in the last post of this series. I will give action steps for myself and readers and provide additional resources.

As I look at the Equal Justice Initiative calendar and read it to my kids, I see that every single day conveys at least one injustice, usually based on race. These are past and present injustices, spanning hundreds of years, demonstrating that racism in this country is not simply an individual problem. Rather, racism is a systemic problem, infecting institutions and structures. Further, this problem centers around justice, therefore it's a problem Godde is concerned about, which means I must be concerned. I don’t think systemic racism is solely a political issue but also a spiritual issue. I am called to love my neighbor, and one way I can do this is by joining the fight to dismantle systems of oppression so that all people can flourish.

(Resources are linked below.)

Videos to View

Race - The Power of Illusion

“Systemic Racism Explained”

“What Is Systemic Racism? - Immigration Policy” Race Forward video with Jay Smooth

Podcasts (for your listening pleasure and discomfort)

Footnotes with Jemar Tisby - “#EndSARS” (Almost 25 minutes into the episode voter suppression is discussed.)

Intersectionality Matters! With Kimberlé Crenshaw - “From the Base to the Face of the Party: Kamala Harris, Black Women & Misogynoir in the Election (episode #25)”

Justice in America - “Episode 5: Excluded from Democracy”

NPR - “#1735 - Whose Country 'Tis of Thee?”

Sincerely, Lettie - “The Jim Crow Series: Racial Terror, Violence, & Lynching (Part 1)”