Looking for “Threats” in all the Wrong Places: A Critique of the Current Use of

Race as a Contextual Effect in Political Science

Hanvood K. McClerking Ohio State University

This paper examines race and contextual eflects, especially as applied to the study of racial politics. Contextual analysis has proven to be an extremely useful tech- nique in political science. Yet there are instances in which it may be misapplied. I argue that some of the findings in the extant literature fail to specifL properly the mechanism by which contextual effects operate. and that such a failure leads to in- complete theorizing about racial politics. I make two basic arguments. The first is that the major theoretical element. group conflicts is under-examined as long as we think of conflict between groups only in terms of mass public attitudes. I suggest, instead. that we pay more attention to elite strategies. The second argument is that group theories seem less generalizable as long as we concentrate on Whites as the only relevant political actors. In summary, I contend that politics are not given priority in contextual models of race. Moving beyond some of the current, more standard applications will allow w to demonstrate empirically a richer picture of how race shapes the political options ofcertain groups in America. especially Blacks and other minority groups.

T h e presidential election of 2000 is notable for a number of reasons, but one aspect deserving more attention from the mainstream media is the impact of race on voting. By “race,” I refer to racial differences in the treatment of Black and White voters and potential voters in this election. As an example of racial differences, look toward Florida and its voting “irregularities.” Port St. Joe, Florida is a small town of 4,000. In Precinct 8, 470 votes were counted; nine out of every ten of those votes went to Vice President Gore (Bennett 2000). But I01 votes were not counted, giving this particular precinct the highest spoilage rate in the county. This unusually high ratio of uncounted to counted ballots is noteworthy, since a high percentage of people who intended to vote, nearly I8 percent, lost that opportunity. Racial difference demonstrates itself clearly here. The disparity results from the fact that, proportionately, Precinct 8 is the part of the county with the most African Americans; eighty-eight percent of the people in Precinct 8 are Black. This is in direct contrast to the rest of the county, which is majority White (and overwhelmingly Bush supporters) and had relatively few problems with spoilage of cast ballots. As Precinct 8 resident Dollie Keyes noted when informed of the high rate of uncounted ballots in her precinct, “ I didn’t know that, but I’m not that surprised” (Bennett 2000). With this and other like comments, the residents of this majority-Black precinct indicated that the high rate of lost voting opportunities was basically “business as usual” for Black citizens.

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This one example would be interesting in and of itself, even if it were an isolated incident. It becomes much more relevant to social science researchers when it seems to be part of a larger pattern. According to the final report on the Florida voting problems by the U. S . Commission on Civil Rights, “In Florida, of the 100 precincts with the highest numbers of disqualified ballots, 83 of them are majority-[Bllack precincts” (www.usccr.gov).’ So, this particular example of Port St. Joe wasn’t an isolated event at all. Rather, it was replicated in many places in Florida. There is also some preliminary evidence that it was replicated in various other places in the U.S. (for example, see Whitaker 2001).

Altogether, these types of systematic occurrences point to the importance of understanding race, politics, and racial context. Here “racial context” refers to the dynamics between the relative sizes ofthe Black and White population in a particular area. These examples from the 2000 election also point to the continued relevance of V.O. Key’s analysis of how important race and racial context are to understanding Southern politics. Key ( 1 949) might suggest that one of the things we should want to know about Port St. Joe and the other Florida voting precincts is the role of elites, both Black and White, in shaping elections. “Shaping elections” means elites influencing everything dealing with elections and the circumstances surrounding these elections. Examples might include the enforcement, or perhaps non-enforcement, of various state election laws by local officials, such as inconsistent attempts to validate a citizen’s voter registration or disallowing certain citizens their right to vote by affidavit or provisional ballot. Circumstances could conceivably range upward from these acts to extralegal techniques like overt voter intimidation (see extensive report from the U. S . Commission on Civil Rights: http://www.usccr.gov/vote2OOO/stdraftl/ main.htm).

These election-altering circumstances are all things that Key and others might assume to vary in accordance with the racial context of these locations. 1 imagine that an intensive study of the contextually-contingent political situation in Port St. Joe and its analogues in many other locations is an example of how political science might capitalize on the lessons wrought by history and by the immediate past election. But these voting irregularities are examples that normally attract little attention in most of the extant literature on race, racial politics, and contextual effects. This is because the vast majority of said literature devotes its energies in other directions, such as the extensive study of the effect of racial context on the racial attitudes of Whites.

This paper considers contextual effects and their application to the study of racial politics. The major theme is that contextual analysis is simultaneously both overused in situations where the causal mechanisms might seem relatively unexplored and underused in situations where such analysis would reveal intriguing political forces at work. I will argue in this paper that some of the findings in the extant literature fail to specify properly the mechanisms by which contextual effects operate, and that such a failure leads to incomplete theorizing about racial politics. I make two main arguments in this paper. The first is that the theoretical substructure of most racial context analysis-group conflict-is under-examined as long as we think of

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conflict between groups only in terms of mass public attitudes. I suggest, instead, that we pay more attention to elite strategies. Elite strategies might include efforts to demobilize out-group voters, perhaps “out-party’’ voters, and other political maneuvers. The second argument is that group conflict seems less generalizable as long as we concentrate on Whites as the on& relevant political actors. In summary, I contend that the basic flaw in previous theorizing is the short shrift given politics in these contextual models of race. Therefore, I also argue that more attention needs to be given to a broader range of dependent and independent variables, moving beyond mass public attitudes on race toward the inclusion of measures of elite and mass public behaviors in group politics. Moving beyond some ofthe current, more standard applications will allow us to demonstrate empirically a richer picture of how race shapes the political options of African Americans and other racial and ethnic minorities in America.

The Use of Race in Contextual Analysis

What are contextual analyses and contextual effects? According to Huckfeldt and Sprague ( I 993), “[c]ontextual theories of politics are built on an assertion of behavioral interdependence: the actions of individual citizens are to be understood as the intersection between individually defined circumstances and the circumstances of surrounding individuals. The distinguishing irreducible element of a contextual analysis is that, in addition to measures of individual properties and preferences, the political behavior of individuals is characterized as contingent on the environment” (28 1). Contextual analyses in political science take many different forms, but virtu- ally all involve the use of one particular element-the addition of the so-called independent variable “context” to standard examinations. Books and Prysby ( 1 99 1 ) define a political science view of context in this way:

A context is a geographically bounded social unit. Thus we will speak of states, counties, cities, communities, precincts, voting districts, census tracts, neighborhoods, and the like as a potential context. . . . This definition of context is broad, but not so broad that it includes all aspects of an individual’s environment (2-3).

One of the main applications of context to racial politics appears in the study of public opinion and racial attitudes. An interesting viewpoint on public opinion and race is illustrated by research on racial threat or, as it is known in some circles (see Walton 1997). the “Black threat” thesis. The literature reveals many studies (Key 1949; Giles 1977; and see Glaser 1994 for example) illustrating that Whites have a strong attitudinal aversion to programs assisting Blacks, and score high on other measures designed to gauge the presence of racial animosities, and that th is sense of animosity is conditional on the size of the Black population in the respondent’s immediate area. One of the dominant paradigms, or theories, that exists to explain

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this animosity is realistic conflict theory (LeVine and Campbell 1972). “The origins of this kind of prejudice (and presumably its political force), according to this theory, are to be found in the realities of direct competition between [Bllacks and [Wlhites for scarce resources. Competitive interdependence produces the perception of threat, which in turn leads to hostility directed at members of the threatening group. Social attitudes, in short, reflect private interests” (Kinder and Sears I98 I , 4 15).

One ofthe ways the literature examines realistic group interest is through the use of context. There is a significant line of research in political science on the contextual effects of race in community units such as neighborhoods, precincts, and counties. According to Huckfeldt ( 1980), “the most commonly observed instance of contextual conflict involves shared living space by [Bllacks and [Wlhites.” He notes that Key ( 1 949) “shows that [Bllack population predominance in some Southern counties heightens the political consciousness of [Wlhites. Whites living in predominantly [Bllack counties are more likely to be politically active than [Wlhites living in predominantly [Wlhite counties” (234). There are many other works in this tradition, and the following literature review should be considered an illustrative sample of the various classes of findings rather than an exhaustive listing of all such works.*

For example, Giles and Hertz (1 994) find that White Republican partisanship is influenced by the Black population size. Huckfeldt and Kohfeld ( 1 989) find a negative relationship between various White attitudes about race and increases in the Black population. Wright (1977) show that the White vote for George Wallace in 1968 was influenced by the presence of Blacks. Carsey ( 1 995) also finds that the White vote is affected by the presence of Blacks, although he claims that the effect is positive, rather than negative. Likewise, Kinder and Mendelberg (1995) find a positive relationship between various White attitudes about race and increases in the Black population. In yet another example from the older extant literature, “Orbell and Sherrill (1969) find evidence indicating that some [Wlhite . . . respondents’ racial and residential attitudes are influenced by the residential proximity of [Bllacks. Whites living in low-income neighborhoods are more likely to be racially intolerant if a higher proportion of [Bllacks live in their neighborhood. and racially hostile [Wlhites are more likely to consider moving if [Bllacks live nearby. . .” (as cited in Huckfeldt 1980,234).

In many ofthese aforementioned studies, the context variable of particular interest is the percentage of the population that is Black relative to the percentage that is White. On many occasions the particular unit of analysis used in examining this context variable is the county. The usage ofthis particular unit ofanalysis is traditional and is usually attributed to problems with Census data (see Glaser 1994). Thus, the percentage ofthe county population that is Black often is the context variable that is used to operationalize this theory of particularized group conflict.

As a way to gain understanding into the complexity of presumed group conflict, context is a worthy framework. But there may be an analytical problem in over- simplifying the context variable, such as when the percentage of Black county population is used to operationalize the concept of”Black threat.” This term, and its

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various analogues, is supposed to represent the idea that the very presence of Blacks in a geographical area constitutes a threat to some Whites, and that the more Blacks in the area, the greater the threat. As Glaser (1994) states, “In heavily [Bllack areas, of course, there is a much greater likelihood that a [Bllack candidate will attain political ofice or that [Bllacks will become an important part of a winning political coalition in their town or county or district. . . . Thus [Wlhites living in such places should be more hostile to [Bllack political aspirations and to [Bllack political power than [Wlhites from areas where this remains a remote possibility” (24). Glaser’s argument can be used to illustrate a particular political explanation of group conflict theory. Group conflict theory can also be employed to examine economic or social conflict, but I shall restrict my comments to an analysis ofthe political portion ofthe group conflict hypotheses.

One of the problems with the ideas of “Black threat” lies in the political power rationale. Huckfeldt and Kohfeld ( I 989) and Glaser (1 994) point out that protection of political power seems to be a legitimate reason for Whites to be “hostile” toward Blacks. Assuming that such a rationale is indeed rational, it seems incongruous that the level of “Black threat” would be defined purely on the contextual variable “percentage Black population in the county, city, state, etc.” If political power- defined by these authors in terms of electoral strength or voting numbers-is the driving force behind White animosity, a variable that aggregates and includes every living Black person in a geographical area does not seem correct. Census data used for the purpose of determining simply how many Blacks in total dwell in a particular region will always overestimate the true political (electoral) strength of Blacks.

If political power is the presumed basis of White animosity, a more efficient measure ofelectoral strength should be used. One such measure could be the number of voting-age Blacks in the geographical area, as suggested in Jordan and Kadalie ( 1 997) and Prysby ( I 989). This context variable rests on the belief that the only legitimate way that an average, defined here as not being a member of a political elite, White could base their assumed political power-based animosity on Black presence would be if it were directly related to the perception ofthe number of voting- age Blacks. In other words, children under the age of 18 do not constitute a threat in the voting booth, and they should be excluded from all analyses of electoral-strength power dynamics.

Of course, it should be obvious that these two measures, gross Black population size and voting-age Black population size, are highly correlated. For example, Prysby ( 1 989) finds that these two measures correlate to the order of 0.98 in his data. But my argument deals less with measurement than with conceptualization. Empirically, which ofthe two measurements is used will make little difference in statistical models. But the point here is that relatively few of the researchers seem to realize the basic contention: that in most cases they intend to model politics, so they should be aware of which measures come closest to the theory. In the words of Prysby ( 1 989), “[tlhis measure [size of voting-age Black population] was chosen on the grounds that it is the most politically relevant” (308).

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In terms of political power from an electoral standpoint, an even more accurate contextual measure of‘ Black political “threat” exists: the number of registered Black voters in the geographic area. An apparent difficulty with using the exact number of registered Black voters to represent the “threat” or lack thereof for Black political power seems to lie in the area of political knowledge. It could be argued that it is mass, as opposed to elite, political opinion that is being gauged by random surveys, and that it is doubtful that the masses would possess, or be able to recall, this information about Black voter registration. That may well be so. Yet if such a relationship could be identified between Black voter registration and mass attitudes, its presence would add weight to the argument that the presumed group conflict is politically based.

A more telling and fundamental question is revealed by the idea of Black voter registration as a measure of“B1ack threat.” By focusing all her analytical faculties on the political abilities o r political preferences of the masses, the analyst may fail to ask another, possibly more significant question. That question is: is an understanding of the mass White public and their “reaction” to Black political power the whole picture for understanding context and racial politics? In my view the previous studies of White “fears,” with the possible exception of Key (1949), seem to have two glaring problems; they ignore the structure of the Black community, and they ignore the preferences of the political elites both Black and White.

By structure of the Black community, I refer to the political, economic, and social framework of Blacks that reside in the geographical units from which the studies are made. It seems odd and incomplete for an analysis of“context” to include nothing more than the sheer number of Blacks in an area. As I tried to allude to earlier in my discussion of Black voter registration, an examination of Black political power that excludes a look at Black political organization and Black empowerment is woefully lacking in comprehensive detail. Black voter registration, office-holding, socioeconomic status, and other measures of empowerment must all be examined in a rich historical context to understand properly the “threat” that Blacks may raise in an individual politicaligeographical unit. This strategy makes sense if the analyst believes that groups are an important level of analysis in political conflict research. My points about Black empowerment merely extend the group analysis more fully to this particular racial group. It seems apparent to me that an analysis of politics that considers itself to be “group conflict theory” will tend to miss important information if it resolutely focuses onb on one group- Whites-and their perception of “confict. I’

My point about political elites concerns the elites’ relevance to the masses and to understanding group conflict. In my discussion of the White mass public’s knowledge about Black voter registration, I stated my perception of the political importance ofthis knowledge. But my statement was incomplete. It may be important to ascertain the masses’ knowledge ofsome measures of Black political strength, but a more important item may be how they know what they know about the perceived “Black threat.” This is to say that mass awareness may depend largely on the elite’s reaction to Black political power. As Giles and Buckner (1993) ask, ”has the linkage

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noted by Key between the political behavior of Southern [Wlhites and the racial concentration in the surrounding context been extinguished? Or, has this linkage only been obscured by the absence of candidates with sufficient racist appeal to make the linkage evident?” (703). This particular “appeal” is one of the ways that White elites may connect racial context to politics. This logic suggests that actual “real world” politics are relevant to theory on contextual effects of racial concentrations on mass public attitudes. For example, in very interesting recent work, Taylor (2000) considers the effects of Black racial composition on White attitudes. Like others before her, she notes the negative correlation between Black population size and White policy attitudes. Of course, there are possible critiques of her findings, one of which comes from Schuman (2000). He notes that “[flor now, we have a finding [the correlations displayed in Taylor 20001 that seems solid in statistical and measurement senses, but lacks an interpretation” (Schuman 2000,308). This suggests a void in the theory about how Black population size acts to affect White opinion. This void may be addressed by a greater appreciation of the role of everyday political struggles.

Black elites also play a significant role in this structure because they are responsible for the empowerment or potential “depowerment” ofthe Black community. The Black elite does this by deciding either to pursue power through politics or not to pursue power. Whether or not the Black elite is leading the charge or has been suspended in a quiescent state is deeply relevant to understanding the “Black threat.” For example, one can examine the subversion of Black politics through the strategic use of Black Republicans in the Reagan-Bush era (see Walton 1997,22-25). Walton’s argument is that:

President Reagan began almost immediately [to alter the political context] by demanding, creating, and promoting a new African American leadership. Ideology, particularly Republican conservatism, became the criterion by which this leadership was appraised. African American political hopefuls could not only not avoid expressing conservative ideology of the Republican party line, but they had to carry it out while in office . . . Under his watch [and due to the anti- Black machinations of Black conservatives], the public mood toward racial equality changed from one of concern to one ofoutright rejection. “Blame the victim, not the government,” was the prevailing notion of the day (23-24).

So, this is the corollary of the strategies pursued by White elites. The basic ~.

question is, how relevant are politics and power to the White masses? The answer may depend on certain unnamed circumstances, but the attention paid to political activity presumably would be considerably less constant among the masses than it would be among White elites (for example, see Converse 1964). Who, after all, would be hurt more by a minor change or dramatic fluctuation in the governing bodies, the masses or the elites? It seems logical to believe that some White elites are probably

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much more concerned about the effect of Black empowerment on their short-term interests than a White public with relatively little at stake.

Thus, a new research plan for the study of Blacks, Whites, and their political power interactions must be drawn. There are several different possible plans and in the remainder of this paper, I shall sketch the outline for three such research plans. My first and strongest contention is that we should spend more time thinking of group politics in terms of “top-down’’ processes, as opposed to the more “bottom- up” models currently utilized. Mass-level attitudes tend to be a reflection of what is happening above (see Zaller 1992), so the elites and their strategies should be given much more attention. This is why we must concentrate more on certain manifestations of elite policy, policies that may have detrimental effects on African American political power. Recent examples include the situation in Florida, noted most famously by the aforementioned Civil Rights Commission investigation. As the Commission’s final report on Florida noted in relatively harsh terms:

During Florida’s November 2000 presidential election, restrictive statutory provisions, wide-ranging errors, and inadequate resources in the Florida election process denied countless Floridians of their right to vote. This disenfranchisement of Florida’s voters fell most harshly on the shoulders of African Americans. Statewide, based on county- level statistical estimates, African American voters were nearly ten times more likely than white voters to have their ballots rejected in the November 2000 election. Poorer counties, particularly those with populations of significant numbers of people [sic] [of color or Afiican American descent?] were more likely to use voting systems with higher spoilage rates than more affluent counties with significant [Wlhite populations. For example, in Gadsden County, the only county in the state with an African American majority, approximately one in eight voters was effectively disenfranchised. In Leon County, on the other hand, which is home to the prosperous state capital and two state universities, fewer than two votes in 1,000 were not counted . . . Even in counties where the same voting technology was used, [Bllacks were far more likely to have their votes rejected than [Wlhites (www. usccr.gov/vote2000/stdraft 1 /main.htm).

The past election made several points very salient to the American public, especially the African American portion of the populace. One such point is the power of elite actors to determine the outcome of political events. The Civil Rights Commission notes that the final Bush victory in the 2000 presidential election was shaped powerfully by elite actors. And these elites tended to be perceived by Blacks as being majority \mite in composition (Whitaker 2001). Many acts of reported voting irregularities, occurred in areas where African Americans tend to live. This makes the election in Florida a good place to explore how racial context might help

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us understand group politics at the elite level. Thus, these are some of the activities that an expanded research paradigm would want to encompass.

The second plan is based on the existing paradigm ofrandom mass public surveys, and the third would be an attempt to move beyond these surveys. For the existing surveys, the best or most eficient way to augment their ability to help understand the concept of group conflict is to expand their set of context variables. The goal of the new and presumably improved context variables will be to represent better the idea of a legitimate threat being presented to the prevailing White power structure at the county level ofanalysis. Having already criticized using the percentage of the Black population as an ineffective way to operationalize racial context, I suggest using Black voting-age population and/or the number of Black registered voters as a means of improving the political logic of the contextual variable.

Now I move to the third possible research plan, which deals with expanding the set of actors that are examined. The dependent variables in the studies of “Black threat” usually are questions of vote choice, voter turnout, or racial attitudes. As noted earlier, we can learn a lot more about inter-group conflict in politics ifwe look beyond these more attitudinal measures. That is why I suggest that we look at the elite actors more. But a major source of consistency in the previous research is that they all generally look at these questions-voting and/or racial attitudes--from the viewpoint of Whites, in the sense of how Whites vote and participate, or how they “feel” about Blacks in political terms. Thus, the realistic conflict theory is used mainly as an attempt to explain the reactions of Whites to Blacks. This is problematic since there are many other plausible alternatives that might explain these aforementioned reactions. My proposal, therefore, is to switch the emphasis from the reactions of Whites to Blacks to the reactions of Blacks to Whites. Also, we should do more to examine other minority groups and their reactions to potential competitor groups, whether they are Whites or other minority groups (for example, see Bob0 and Hutchings 1996). If the realistic conflict theory is an accurate description of groups that find themselves challenged by out-groups, its explanatory ability should hold when studying Black-controlled government and its interchange with political competitors. Similar methodological techniques could be used in these studies because, presumably, many of the underlying assumptions would not change. The main difference would be that the group with political control will be Black-r non- White, to add further generalizability to the results. With the historic asymmetries of power that have been in play in the U.S., this would probably necessitate the study of individual cities to find the requisite power structures. But there is no reason for the realistic conflict theory to lose its basis if it is the most plausible hypothesis to explain the dynamics of groups competing for political power. My scenario may not be the only method of studying this concept, but it would be very interesting to see if such theory could be viewed in terms of “White threat” to Black authority or minority empowerment.

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Conclusion

The current political science literature on racial contextual effects is relatively old, dating back to Key 1949 at least, but it is also relatively one-sided. “Racial threat” is the main way that scholars have utilized the concept of racial context for theoretical purposes. These “racial threat” hypotheses have generally been operationalized with Whites as actors-voters or holders of certain attitudes-and with Blacks as the reference group, i.e. the group creating the racial context in which Whites operate. This particular empirical and theoretical focus appears problematic.

Books and Prysby (1991) state that “The goal of contextual analysis is to advance social science theory and understanding by uncovering the extent ofcontex- tual effects” (4). But they explain the potential problems that are inherent in the use of contextual analysis, saying “From a theoretical standpoint, two related questions face students of contextual analysis: what mechanisms transmit contextual-level forces to the individual level, and what models correctly specify the relationship between the levels?” (15). Due to the limitations of the threat hypothesis and the focus on Whites, I contend that previous studies on racial context do not offer enough theoriz- ing on all of the correct mechanisms and models of contextualized race. This is especially true for studies of political group conflict. In this area my points echo Schuman’s (2000) admonition concerning the lack of “an interpretation.” M y new research suggestions provide potential methods to confront some of these problems.

Contextual analysis has proven to be an extremely useful technique in political science. With this analytical tool, researchers have discovered many interesting points about the political world. As mentioned earlier, these points range from findings dealing with voting behavior to findings on partisanship and racial attitudes. These findings have expanded our appreciation for the role of race in American politics. My critique has little to do with the quality of this extant work, for the previous research has tended to be excellent. Rather, this critique is about the quantity of work. This is because my paper calls for much further research into the role of race in politics using contextual analyses. By expanding our usage of context, while simultaneously expanding our focus on elite behavior and other racial and ethnic groups, we develop a broader knowledge of how race can really work in our country’s politics.

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Notes

The author thanks Ryan Hudson, Vincent L. Hutchings, Brian McKenzie, lrfan Nooruddin, Tasha Philpot, Marek Steedman, and lsmail White for their helpful assistance and sharp, insightful criticisms. Their efforts have made this paper much better than it otherwise would have been.

I At this writing I have not yet received a hard copy of this report. The report can be found on- line at rhe U.S. Commission on Civil Rights' web page, using the cited internet address.

A search of the JSTOR electronic database reveals that there were nine articles published just since 1989 on this specific topic-racial context and Black population size-in the political science journals covered by this particular database.

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