In Black Voices in the Halls of Power, authors Jennifer R. Garcia, Christopher T. Stout, and Katherine Tate explore how US lawmakers use racial rhetoric to elevate the voice of Black communities, influence policy, and shape voter trust. Through a combination of data-driven research and accessible storytelling, the book uncovers the strategic ways politicians speak about race, revealing how rhetoric impacts policymaking and representation and offering fresh insights into race and power in American politics. The book explores how politicians craft messages to appeal to diverse audiences and use political communication to advance legislative priorities. It also examines how legislators' engagement in racial outreach affects voter attitudes. Given the increasingly important role of race on the national political stage in the US, the book provides a critical yet engaging examination of race, rhetoric, and representation in Congress.

‘Black Voices in the Hall of Power transcends typical accounts of descriptive, symbolic, and substantive representation with a commanding, multi-method analysis of interviews, survey experiments, legislative activity, and hundreds of thousands of press releases and tweets to demonstrate how Black legislators’ rhetorical representation reshapes the legislative landscape for Black constituents.’

LaGina Gause - University of California, San Diego

‘This book is a must-read for those who care how communication shapes politics in Congress and in America. The authors persuasively argue that legislators, especially marginalized Black and Latino legislators, engage in rhetorical representation strategies to uplift the voices of Black and Latino constituents. The book shows that words are meaningful, as legislative rhetoric on race is connected to public policy outcomes and to voter opinions. The book is methodologically sophisticated, relying upon interviews with congressional communications staff, quantitative text analysis, observational data, and experimental data. I thoroughly enjoyed reading the book, and this is one of the most significant contemporary works on race and representation in the United States.’

Christian Grose - University of Southern California

‘This book is a must-read for scholars and public policymakers concerned with understanding how the presence of African Americans in political institutions leads to the effective representation of African American interests. Using an array of data sources, the authors demonstrate that diversity in Congress is key to providing a voice for underrepresented groups.’

Michael Minta - University of Minnesota, Twin Cities