Ethnic-Bloc Voting: Legitimate

Black Chicagoans' cuphoria over the 36 percent of the Democratic primary votes that gave Harold Washington victory over his two white opponents--Jane Byrne and Richard M. Daley--had barely subsided before conservative pundits in Chicago and elsewhere began equating the 80 percent ethnic-bloc vote that Blacks gave Washington with anti-democratic or racist behavior. This disingenuous equation of ethnic-bloc voting with anti-democratic behavior holds that ethnic of racial cohesion in electoral politics is intrinsically irrational, sanctioning emotional and atavistic styles of political behavior. Though there is a superficial plausibility to this sort of reasoning it doesn't really stand up very well when submitted to closer scrutiny, especially in the context of American political culture.

Thus when Black Americans who are an ethnic-group-of-color, back a Black candidate as a means of advancing their political presence in city, state, and federal politics they are not committing a racist act--anymore, say, than are Jews who vote as a bloc to elect New York state's first Jewish-American governor (Herbert Lehman in 1932), or Irish who vote as a bloc to elect the first Irish-American governors of Illinois (Charles Deneen--1905, Edward Dunne--1913), or Boston Irish who vote as a bloc to elect the first Irish American governor and U.S. Senator in Massachusetts (David Walsh after World War 1). Such ethnic-bloc voting (or its equivalent among women voters) is a valid means in a democracy for the political empowerment of ethnic groups who must overcome the vicious forms of ethnic subordination and negation imposed upon then within American society. And, of course, it is hardly necessary to belabor the point that Afro-Americans have endured enormous ethnic subordination.

For ethnic groups in American politics ethnic-bloc voting is characterized by several developmental stages. Ethnic-bloc voting emerges with the formative stage of an ethnic group's quest for political efficacy and for parity of political status--a quest often occurring simultaneously with a bid for parity of social status. As the formative stage is realized, ethnic-bloc voting atenuates. It gives way, sometimes slowly sometimes not, to a greater political maturity, characterized by trans-ethnic voting choices and issue-oriented voting.

For example, after nearly two generations of ethnic subordination by Boston's WASP elites, the political empowerment of Irish-Americans dictated Irish ethnic-bloc voting for Boston's first Irish mayor--Hugh O'Brien in 1884--who was followed by other Irishmen like Patrick Collins and John "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald. But this Irish breakthrough to political parity did not exclude WASPs from the mayorality of Boston. The reason for this is that the inclusive pluralism of American political culture--a democratic pluralism that encourages inter-ethnic power sharing--militating against political exclusivism and ethnic-oligarchy tendencies. So that in 1917 "Honey Fitz" (grandfather of the fist Irish-American president of the U.S., John Fitzgerald Kennedy) gave way to a WASP Republican, George Albee Hibbard.

Thus Afro-Americans' ethnic-bloc voting for Harold Washington in Chicago is not racist. What is racist, however, is the attitude that Black ethnic-bloc voting is illegitimate.

This viewpoint implies that Afro-Americans, as they achieve greater parity of political and social status with whites, are somehow less capable of responding to the norms and rules of American politics inclusive pluralism than Jews, Italians, Irish, Poles, Greeks, and other ethnic groups. It is, alas, precisely this attitude toward Blacks that sparked the pathetic pandemonium in Chicago's Democratic party--a pandemonium skewed toward barring Chicago's Blacks from parity of political status with whites, and as such warrants the label "racist". When ethnic-bloc voting seeks to exclude groups from political and social parity it is then racist.

What white voters, in cities like Chicago, who entertain racist phobia toward Afro-American candidates fail to recognize is that their paranoid style political preferences are not fixed habits for all white voters and can be checkmuted when Blacks are galvanized to turnout in larger numbers than whites. These conditions happily obtained in Chicago's April 12th mayoral election, gave Harold Washington a more than 42,000 vote edge over Republican Bernard Epton, out of more than 1,3 million votes cast. Upper middle-class and professional whites in the Lakefront wards kept their own racial feelings in check enough to give Harold Washington some 20 percent of the total white vote, ensuring him some 52 percent of the city wide total.

The ability of an increasing number of white voters to participate in aiding Afro-Americans to realize parity of political status with whites was also apparent in several other contests during the 1982 elections. Just as Indiana's white voters have elected their first Black to Congress--a Black school teacher from a 75 percent white congressional district--so Afro-American voters showed a new political maturity in the 1982 elections which is crucial to the successful evolution of inclusive-pluralistic values in American democracy. In Alabama, the customary political patterns were modified when George Wallace, seeking a political comeback, gained a crucial 30 percent of the Black primary vote which assured him a run-off where he then garnered a whopping 90 percent of the Black vote (against the advice of civil rights leaders like Coretta Scott King), guaranteeing his election Wallace, in victory, swiftly rewarded Alabama's Blacks for their crucial support, appointing two Blacks to his Cabinet and supported the appointment of four other Blacks to committee chairmanships in the Alabama Legislature. That a new day is dawning for Blacks in Alabama politics may be a rash prediction, but rejection by more than 30 percent of Alabama Black voters of civil rights leaders' preference for a recognizable white liberal candidate in the gubernatorial primary does alter some old assumptions and conventional wisdom about Black politics.

The Black ethnic-bloc voting in Chicago that ensured Harold Washington's victory has opened up that city's governance to a sizeable segment of the population heretofore excluded from executive leverage. As such this ethnic-bloc voting was progressive, not racist or regressive, widening the range of pluralistic participatory values Some one-fifth of whites in Chicago had enough decency and were mature enough regarding the pluralistic norms that define American democracy to assist Washington's electoral victory. As Blacks consolidate their status of political parity with whites in Chicago, they can be expected to diversify their bloc-voting in the direction of trans-ethnic and issue-oriented choices. That Black voters in Alabama displayed such diversification of their voting profile, enabling ex-racist George Wallace to return to the governorship, ought to be evidence enough that Afro-Americans are as mature as--and perhaps even more mature than--whites in respecting the inclusive pluralistic ideals of American democracy.

Martin L. Kilson is a professor of Government.