Political Participation - African-american Political Participation

Elected Officials

The number of African-Americans elected to public offices at all levels of U.S. government has increased significantly since the 1980s. The largest gain has been in city and county offices, which include county commissioners, city council members, mayors, vice mayors, and aldermen/alderwomen.

African-Americans and Political Parties

According to the Pew Research Center's 1999 report Retro-Politics: The Political Typology—Version 3.0, about 66 percent of African-Americans considered themselves Democrats and only 7 percent identified themselves as Republicans in 1999. This distribution contrasted sharply with white political self-identification, which saw an even split of white voters between the two major parties at 30 percent each.

While the Democratic Party has been considered the party of African-Americans since the 1980s, some younger and more economically successful African-Americans identify themselves as Republicans. In the past, the Republican Party had done little to encourage more than a minimal African-American Republican vote. Today some African-Americans believe that they have an opportunity to be heard in the Republican Party. Many suggest the Democratic Party has taken the African-American voter for granted and see room to grow within the Republican Party. The overwhelming majority of African-Americans, however, remain Democrats. In the Presidential election of 2000 Republican George W. Bush received just 9 percent of the African-American vote.

The traditional African-American political goals, as presented by the thirteen original members of the Congressional Black Caucus (founded in 1969), are "to promote the public welfare through legislation designed to meet the needs of millions of neglected citizens." Government participation has not only been welcomed but also actively sought to correct the ills of the disadvantaged, many of whom are minorities. A small but growing number of African-Americans are turning away from with this position and are aligning themselves with the Republican Party, which believes in less government involvement.

As the African-American middle class continues to grow, party loyalties may change. Some younger professional African-Americans who may not have experienced poverty or the deprivation of the inner cities may be attracted to the Republican Party platform of less government and lower taxes. A vast majority of African-Americans embraced the programs of President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society and his War on Poverty. Today some believe that reliance on government has caused many African-Americans and other underprivileged persons to rely less on their own initiative and more on the federal government to help improve their situation.