State Sen. Ben Brooks has the highest percentage of black constituents of any Republican in the upper chamber, a fact that has made his district one of more competitive in Alabama.

That seems likely to change, however, when the Legislature adopts a plan to redraw the political map this year. The result could be a much safer Republican seat.

The rewrite is required by law after each Census to keep political districts roughly equal in population. Lawmakers also must maintain the same number of majority-black districts to comply with federal law.

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For decades, under pressure from the U.S. Department of Justice, states have been drawing political lines to carve out majority-black districts to increase minority representation. The effect has been a dramatic increase in the number of black leaders elected to office.

But Bositis, who written about the issue, said the Republican approach differs from when Democrats were in charge. Democrats created majority-black districts but also designed others with a high enough black population to elect white Democrats.

He said he would expect to see districts with very large black majorities after this year’s redistricting.

“When they’re done, they could all but ensure that the Legislature remains Republican for the rest of the decade,” Bositis said.


Read more at the Mobile Press-Register.

Congressional map-drawers in states across the country are struggling to maintain majority-black congressional districts as African Americans move out of urban areas. And now, it appears plausible that one of those new districts could be won by a non-black candidate.

Former congresswoman Debbie Halvorson (D-Ill.) is trying to do what few before her have accomplished: win a majority-black district as a non-black candidate. She faces an ethically wounded Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) in a primary in a district that has been stretched from the South Side of Chicago far out into the Cook County suburbs and Will County, which Halvorson represented for one term before losing in 2010.

Only two majority-black districts have been won by a candidate who isn’t black in recent years. One is the Memphis-based district currently held by Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.); the other was a New Orleans-based district briefly held by Rep. Joseph Cao (R-La.).

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David Bositis, an expert on race and politics at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies and a friend of Jackson’s, said black voters are actually more apt to vote for white candidates than the inverse. It’s simply a matter, he said, of white candidates not running in majority-black districts.

“Contrary to what a lot of people think, black voters do tend to be very pragmatic,” Bositis said. “They look to elect somebody who is going to benefit them.”

Read more at The Washington Post.

Herman Cain’s turn atop the polls in the contest for the Republican presidential nomination captured the attention of journalists and pundits and sparked excitement among grass-roots conservative activists. But is it really possible that he — a black man who overcame poverty in the segregated South to become a wealthy entrepreneur and front-runner in the GOP race — would be the one to bring African American voters back to their original political home?

Cain seems to think so. In a mailer sent to Iowa voters recently, the candidate says “as a descendent of slaves I can lead the Republican party to victory by garnering a large share of the black vote, something that has not been done since Dwight Eisenhower garnered 41 percent of the black vote in 1956.”

It is a proposition that was quickly dismissed by political scholars and analysts, including some members of Cain’s party. Although he has done better than any other black Republican presidential candidate in terms of attracting support, few believe Cain could snare a sizable number of black voters in a general election, especially against President Obama.

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David Bositis, senior political analyst at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, argues that as the Republican Party grows more white and conservative, it represents the interests of most black people less.

“The fact of the matter is, there are no more savvy voters in the country than African American voters, and they’re not interested in any candidate who is not promising them more and better jobs, more and better education, more and better health care and an agenda that aims to deal with the historic racism in the country,” Bositis said. “None of those things are being offered by the Republicans, including Herman Cain.”

Read more at The Washington Post.

Speaking at a forum at Howard University on the effective use of social media, leading experts on socioeconomics and political communications urged college students and other young voters to transform their Facebook and Twitter contacts into powerful political networks in advance of the 2012 elections.

The non-partisan forum on Wednesday was convened by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies Media and Technology Institute, in partnership with Howard’s School of Communications , NAACP, National Action Network, Voto Latino, the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, the Hip Hop Caucus and leading media outlets that target African Americans.
 
“African Americans in particular are over-represented on sites like Twitter,” said political commentator Jamal Simmons of The Raben Group. “Transforming the contacts to good works can make a significant impact if this year is anything like the last election when African Americans played a critical role in getting this president elected,” he added.

An overwhelming allegiance to the Democratic Party has left black lawmakers in the South without power in Republican-controlled state legislatures, according to a new report.

The nonpartisan Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies said in a report issued Friday that despite Barack Obama’s election as president, black voters and elected officials in the South have less influence now than at any other time since the civil rights era.

“Since conservative whites control all the power in the region, they are enacting legislation both neglectful of the needs of African-Americans and other communities of color,” the senior research associate, David A. Bositis, wrote in a paper titled “Resegregation in Southern Politics?” The center, based in Washington, conducts research and policy analysis, particularly on issues that affect blacks and other minorities.

Read more at The New York Times.

It was previously available at The Washington Post, ABC News, and MSNBC.

Following the election of President Barack Obama, many political observers – especially conservative ones — suggested that the United States is now a post-racial society. Three years later, in the region of the country where most African Americans live, the South, there is strong statistical evidence that politics is resegregating, with African Americans once again excluded from power and representation. Black voters and elected officials have less influence now than at any time since the civil rights era. And since conservative whites control all the power in the region, they are enacting legislation both neglectful of the needs of African Americans and other communities of color (in health care, in education, in criminal justice policy) as well as outright hostile to them, as in the assault on voting rights through photo identification laws and other means.

The racially polarized voting that defines much of southern politics at this time, is in certain ways recreating the segregated system of the Old South, albeit a de facto
system with minimal violence rather than the de jure system of before. If the political parties in the South are now a substitute for racial labels, then black aspirations there will continue to be limited. All this is reminiscent of the white primaries and poll taxes of days gone by.

This fact sheet provides information on the history of the Joint Center's Black Elected Officials (BEOs) Roster, its importance, and its transition to an electronic format.

When Lucille Richmond cast her ballot for Barack Obama three years ago, she, like many African-Americans, embraced the historic opportunity to help elect the nation’s first black president.

But waiting in line at the county employment security commission last week, the 52-year-old grandmother - who lost two food preparation jobs and is searching for full-time work - can’t muster the will to support Obama for a second term.

“I don’t see what he’s done,’’ said Richmond, a Democrat. “I’m not even going to waste my time and vote.’’

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Obama’s defenders say there is a disconnect between the president’s genuine efforts on behalf of urban and disadvantaged populations and perceptions in the community. The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a black think tank in Washington, said the president’s initiatives such as health care reform, the stimulus package that kept many public workers in their jobs, the extension of unemployment benefits, and grants to historically black colleges as well as increase in Pell grants benefited many African-Americans.

“If I were to criticize the Obama administration, it has a very good record with regards to African-Americans but it does not boast about it,’’ said David Bositis, senior political analyst.

Read more at The Boston Globe.

Of all the unlikely developments in American politics over the last two decades, the most astonishing is this: liberals suddenly love Ronald Reagan. They have taken to celebrating certain virtues they claim Reagan possessed—virtues they believe are absent from the conservative body politic today—while looking back with nostalgia at the supposed civility of the political struggles of the 1980s.

"There's something there I miss today," mused the former Democratic staffer and longtime talk-show host Chris Matthews in January about the relationship between Reagan and House Speaker Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill, the most powerful Democrat in Washington during Reagan's first term. Matthews dreamily evoked a time when Reagan and O'Neill had drinks together, swapped Irish stories, slapped backs, and, they say, cut deals with a minimum of personal rancor—as opposed to the ugly relations between the two parties today.

Even more notable is the fact that Reagan has become a model for presidential governance for . . . Barack Obama. Time, having proclaimed Obama to be the second coming of FDR in January 2009, abandoned that image in favor of declaring an Obama "bromance" with Reagan in January 2011. The White House's press office revealed that Obama had read Lou Cannon's biography of Reagan over the 2010 Christmas holidays, a choice that might once have seemed as incongruous as John F. Kennedy reading up on Calvin Coolidge. Obama even wrote an homage to Reagan for USA Today in February at the time of Reagan's centennial birthday. "Reagan recognized the American people's hunger for accountability and change," the president said, thereby conferring on Reagan two of his most cherished political slogans.

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Eddie Williams, head of what the Washington Post described as "the respected black think tank, the Joint Center for Political Studies," reacted to Reagan's election thus: "When you consider that in the climate we're in—rising violence, the Ku Klux Klan—it is exceedingly frightening." (This was not far removed from Fidel Castro's opinion about Reagan, offered right before the election: "We sometimes have the feeling that we are living in the time preceding the election of Adolf Hitler as chancellor of Germany.") In the Nation, Alan Wolfe​ wrote that "the United States has embarked on a course so deeply reactionary, so negative and mean-spirited, so chauvinistic and self-deceptive that our times may soon rival the McCarthy era."

Read more at the American Enterprise Institute.

Herman Cain's assertion that blacks' overwhelming support of the Democratic Party was evidence of their having been "brainwashed" was the latest salvo in an intra-racial war of words over the state of black politics.

From President Barack Obama's recent run-ins with BET News and the Congressional Black Caucus, to attendees at a caucus conference questioning the racial consciousness of Cain and Republican Rep. Allen West because of their association with the tea party, many observers on both sides of the political aisle are trying to figure out what to make of all of the infighting.

Is there such a thing as a uniform black political agenda? Are conservatism and black cultural pride incompatible? Do blacks really behave as political lemmings, and could they benefit from embracing the Republican agenda?

Read more at the Indianapolis Recorder.