As with American politics in general, black-Latino intergroup relations take place in various arenas in the political system and the groups’ interactions might well be affected by, and thus vary, across the different governmental, political, and policy contexts. In Chapter 2, we saw considerable evidence of “conflict” at the urban/local level and in mass attitudes regarding blacks and Latinos. In this chapter, we begin to examine black-Latino relations in a different governmental context – the national level – assessing the relations of black-Latino advocacy groups regarding two major policy-making institutions and certain access points for potential influence. Specifically, we focus on the efforts of black and Latino minority advocacy or interest groups seeking to influence policy in the U.S. Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court. We present evidence that allows us to assess similarities and/or differences in the groups’ policy concerns and positions as demonstrated in Congress, specifically, congressional testimony, and in the legal arena, the filing of amicus briefs. These data represent important additional evidence that is valuable for studying and advancing understanding of black and Latino interest group activity and intergroup relations. These questions have not been previously posed, or certainly not posed in quite this way, and this type of evidence has not previously been considered. As will be seen, we do not come across any signs of conflict in the extensive and varied evidence we consider, unlike what is often found in the urban-level data reviewed in the previous chapter. Instead, we see indications of “independence” and of some “cooperation.”

Thus far, we have examined relationships between minority advocacy groups as they seek to influence Congress and the Supreme Court. Most significantly, there was no evidence of conflict between blacks and Latinos in those endeavors, in contrast to what is widely portrayed in previous studies focused on urban politics. Instead, the evidence pointed to the general independence of policy positions, punctuated by cooperation on a relatively small set of policy issues when minority interest groups advocated on behalf of their constituents in the legislative and legal arenas. National advocacy groups represent a national geography of interests, of course. And thus the lack of conflict we have found so far may be dampened when localized interests pull policy advocates away from the singular national interests of the advocacy groups we have examined in Chapters 3 and 4. In this chapter we expand our investigation in important ways, focusing the analysis on another dimension of black-Latino relations – the voting behavior of members of Congress (MCs) on a distinct set of roll-call votes. That is, we shift from the role of important, though informal actors, advocacy groups, and examine significant actors who play fundamental roles in a major formal institution of the national government as elected representatives – members of the U.S. House of Representatives.

The electoral connection that purportedly dominates MCs’ behavior is one potential source that links mass-based conflict sometimes found in local geographic districts to national level politics (Mayhew 1974). Thus, it may be that MCs’ attention to mass preferences will reflect the conflict suggested in local level studies, even when national policy issues are addressed. Conflict could emerge as MCs are more influenced by, or beholden to, localized geographic interests than are national minority advocacy groups. On the other hand, it is arguable that MCs are at least partly removed or detached from certain direct local influences because of the different geographic breadth and the types of policy authority they have, along with the role of political parties and/or ideology in national governance – and these contrast considerably with the situation of local governments (and of mass attitudes). These various possibilities underscore the importance of closely examining minority (and white) MCs’ behaviors as part of our assessment of black-Latino relations at the national level.

We saw some evidence, in Chapter 5, that minority lawmakers act as both strong advocates for their own group’s interests and also as conduits for interminority group support. Specifically, black and Latino members of Congress (MCs) tended to support NAACP and NHLA positions at least as much, and in some Congresses to a greater extent, as their white counterparts (even after accounting for other f actors). A central conclusion of that chapter is present throughout this study: there is virtually no evidence of conflict or competition between advocates for black and Latino concerns; there is much evidence suggesting independent group advocacy, and some evidence of cooperation across minority groups at the national level.

In this chapter we extend this analysis in related, but different, directions. Rather than directly examining advocacy we seek to identify the source(s) of cross-group support that may help us understand the lack of interminority group conflict at the national level. We again focus on the behavior of members of Congress and their support for NHLA and NAACP legislative positions. The results suggest several important points consistent with larger themes in our analysis regarding (a) the importance of broad (versus narrower) interests in national politics (especially when compared to local politics) and its implications for dampening conflict and (b) the frequently independent behavior and/or unique foci or orientation of blacks and of Latinos (both advocacy groups and MCs) in national politics relative to each other and to white elites. We find that black and Latino MCs appear to have different cues or heuristics that magnify support for their own group’s positions compared to what shapes their views on the other group’s positions. Specifically, ideology (in terms of a standard, general liberal/conservative conception) plays a lesser role regarding support for representatives’ own racial/ethnic group’s policy positions; those are significantly animated by within-group considerations.

A central question in this book is the nature of black-Latino relations in American national politics. In the evidence we present in later chapters, black-Latino conflict is found to be essentially nonexistent in the arena of national institutions and policy authority; additionally, the evidence regarding national-level elite behavior indicates that intergroup relations are generally marked by “independence” and there is also some indication of comity or cooperation. These findings are more notable when contrasted with the results of several research efforts over the last few decades at the local level, where findings of conflict are not unusual, and signs of tension are also evident (cf. Telles et al. 2011; Nelson and Lavariega Monforti 2005). The purpose of this chapter is to summarize evidence and related theorizing from previous analyses which is relevant, but also stands in contrast to our subsequent detailed examination of national politics. Serving as a “preface” to our later analysis, we describe specific questions that have been studied, show how these studies examine the issue, and identify the forms and variations of intergroup relations. We also consider the causes for the relationships that are claimed since those occur in the urban, local education, and state politics (that is, “subnational”) levels, and in mass attitudes research.

The literature discussed in this chapter is comparative within particular levels and types of governments. That is, in that research, cities are studied individually (in case studies) but are also frequently compared to other cities, school districts are compared to school districts, and states to states. But analyses attempting to make other comparisons – say, cities to states – are not done here because the different jurisdictional spheres and varied policy and geographic/territorial authority of the two types make such comparisons theoretically and practically inappropriate. The governments at the local and state (and national) levels have different, albeit sometimes overlapping, policy responsibilities and draw primarily on different tax bases; furthermore, cities are technically “creatures of the state.” Hence, the absence of research directly comparing these different levels of government is based on a clear recognition that their geographic scope and/or related policy authority makes them incommensurable for many analytical purposes.

Relations between blacks and Latinos in American politics and society have become an increasingly relevant concern, arguably growing more important and complex over time. Though these matters have been studied extensively, virtually absent in the research is a systematic assessment of minority intergroup relations at the national level. Nearly all the research on such relations in governmental decision-making institutions has focused on urban/local politics, while another body of research has focused on mass attitudes (cf., for example, Browning, Marshall, and Tabb 1984; Telles et al. 2011; Nelson and Lavariega Monforti 2005, along with many other studies, a number of which are examined in Chapter 2). This book examines black-Latino relations in national politics with the central goal of describing and assessing them, and seeking to better understand their nature – specifically, whether those relations are most often characterized by conflict, independence, cooperation, or something else. To study this question, we examine an array of evidence that provides a firm basis for assessing black-Latino relations at the national level, which is essential if we are also to consider what might explain those relations. But, again, as things stand, because the existing research generally focuses on local politics or other dimensions of black-Latino relations, there has been little to no adequate evidence on which to base either empirical assessments or the theoretical understanding of black-Latino relations in national politics.

Preface

We began thinking about and initially working on the ideas and evidence in our analysis of black-Latino relations in the United States some time around 2001 (which is more than a decade before it is being published), to the best of our recollection. Our personal lives and situations changed in a host of complex ways. And countless professional responsibilities, developments, commitments (including other research projects) intervened, affecting, and often disrupting and delaying, our ability to focus on this project and give the concentrated periods of time required to move ahead with analysis, writing, and revision, and all their associated complications. In short, “life happens.” At the same time, various political events in American society arose during the decade of 2000–10 that were and are directly relevant to our concerns. To name but a very few of the many that could be noted, the growth and visibility of the Latino population, perhaps punctuated in 2003 with the statement (from the U.S. Census Bureau) that the Latino population had surpassed the black population in size; the clamor and controversies over (illegal) immigration; and the emergence and election of Barack Obama. These and other events underscore and have heightened the salience of the issues we address in this book.

The increased significance of the topic is also reflected in the rather vast and varied body of research on black-Latino relations that proliferated over this time (some part of that research is summarized and reviewed in Chapter 2). We acknowledge here, and emphasize several times later, our appreciation of the previous work on the topic; it is informative and consequential, and we take it most seriously.

Efforts to influence public policy occur in several forums in national politics. Along with congressional testimony and amicus filings, which we examined in Chapter 3, advocacy groups assess or monitor congressional behavior by selecting major issues the groups deem important, and rating members of Congress on their voting on the issues selected. These ratings are often called congressional scorecards and are used to both inform constituencies about and pressure members of Congress regarding the level of support a member gives to each groups’ agenda. They allow groups to publicize the behavior of those members who agree or disagree with their positions, and ratings often serve as proxies for support of groups’ interests in studies that seek to explain why members behave as they do. We use the ratings in a different way in this chapter to extend our analysis of black-Latino advocacy group relations.

Instead of the overall “rating” for each member, which is usually the item of interest in advocacy group ratings, our interest in this chapter is the policy and legislative issues from which groups derive their ratings. The contents of the ratings provide useful information for describing the issues of concern to minority advocacy groups, their positions on those issues, and from these, the degree to which cooperation, conflict, or nonconflict/independent behavior mark black-Latino relations. The analysis will examine the issues identified as salient (because of their inclusion on scorecards) as well as the policy positions of minority advocacy organizations in terms of the preferred vote (yes or no) on each issue. We thus address two basic questions: (a) what votes (or types of votes) in Congress are deemed most important, and (b) what is the degree of congruence or overlap of the votes identified in scorecards of black and Latino advocacy groups? This allows us to examine advocacy group behavior in terms of groups’ efforts to affect the congressional arena through the identification of policy issues, and further address the central questions of this study: what is the nature of black-Latino intergroup relations as they occur in national politics?

Historically distinct and ongoing social and demographic developments in America, particularly pronounced during the last third of the twentieth and the early twenty-first centuries, are altering the larger polity. While the color line between whites and blacks has been and remains fundamentally significant to the American experience, dimensions of racial/ethnic relations have emerged that bring important additional variation and complication to intergroup relations in American racial politics. A demographic transformation combined with formal equality has emerged from the civil rights era, yet continuing high racial/ethnic economic disparity raises an array of questions and has numerous implications for the political system. One major implication of this social change is that relations between Latinos and blacks – the two largest minorities – have grown in importance and constitute a significant dimension of American politics. Black-Latino relations will play a pivotal role in affecting and being affected by America’s racial/ethnic interminority as well as minority/nonminority politics, and interclass politics, more generally.

At the same time, these issues are part of larger arguments about pluralism as a description of and prescription for democracy in the United States in that competition or coalition across numerous groups is an important part of pluralism’s analytical emphasis. Assembling and integrating a wide array of evidence, we focused on a significant though largely neglected sphere of black-Latino political relations, the national government arena, which is a distinct part of and access point in the American political system. Our central empirical findings that there is little or no conflict and considerable evidence of independence between blacks and Latinos may be surprising, given what other research (on urban politics and mass attitudes) has found and impressions might lead us to expect. We believe these findings are significant in themselves, and had we done only this, our study would have made a notable contribution as an untold story in black-Latino relations and American politics more generally.

There is a very limited body of previous scholarship on minority intergroup relations in national politics; it describes just a few issues and examines a limited range of evidence. Furthermore, these works are seldom guided by theoretical frameworks attentive to potential differences in how policies and intergroup relations might vary across levels of government. As demonstrated in this book thus far, examining the national level systematically and in several ways and different venues reveals virtually no evidence of minority intergroup conflict; this stands in some contrast to what has often been identified in the urban politics and similar research literatures. In this chapter we supplement our previous analyses in Chapters 3–6 with a broad overview and description of black-Latino relations on several public policy issues and thus further explore whether and how the relations between the two minority groups may vary across policy issues at this level of government. The evidence from the examples we assess here is consistent with what we have found to this point: virtually no indication of conflict, but indications that the groups often act independently. These assessments notwithstanding, several prior studies of black-Latino relations at the national level suggested something different from what we have reported; we begin by noting those other claims.

Vaca’s (2004) analysis of the “presumed alliance” between Latinos and blacks identified several instances where the two groups had diverged on major federal legislation in the past. The 1975 law extending the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965 ultimately addressed “language minority” and Latino concerns in its final version but did so over the initial objections of the NAACP. The NAACP felt the addition of language provisions (and inclusion of Latinos, and others) would undercut the previous legislation’s central focus on blacks and the effectiveness as intended in the original 1965 law. Similarly, some members of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR), a group closely linked to black interests (especially at the time), succeeded in revising the language assistance provisions of the 1985 voting rights legislation which “directly affected Latinos and other minorities in such a way as to reduce its coverage for language groups.” Efforts in Congress in the mid-1980s to make English the “official” language of the United States, while ultimately defeated, were only nominally opposed at the outset by certain civil rights groups, including the LCCR, according to Vaca.