Will Latinos Vote for a Black President?
By Jennifer Millman
January 25, 2008
A recent New Yorker article ended with the following quote from Sen. Hillary Clinton's Latino pollster Sergio Bendixen: "The Hispanic voter--and I want to say this very carefully--has not shown a lot of willingness or affinity to support black candidates."
Mainstream media has largely focused on whether whites would vote for a Black president, but whether Latinos will vote for a Black president may be an even more important question in terms of who gets elected, says Paula McClain, a professor of political science, law, public policy and African American Studies at Duke University. Why?
To listen to McClain talk about why Latinos hold stereotypical views of Blacks and why they don't come to the country with a clean slate on racial issues, click on the audio icon. 
McClain's research indicates that Latinos, especially recent immigrants, are more likely to vote for Clinton than Barack Obama because they identify more with whites than Blacks, a theory supported by previous findings. Surveys by the Pew Research Center have found Latinos' views on race relations to be similar to those of whites, and Latinos are most likely to date white people than any other race outside their own. Why is this important?
While 76 percent of Blacks say they would support Obama, only 41 percent of Latinos and 26 percent of whites say the same, according to a May 2007 Harris Poll.
Latino voters are strategically located in key primary states and helped propel President Bush to reelection in 2004. Now that the GOP's harsh stance on immigration has turned off the Latino voting bloc, their support is up for grabs. Read Latinos' Warning to Democrats--Ignore Us Now, Pay Later to learn why these voters are so crucial.
Why Do Latinos Identify With Whites?
Latinos tend to identify with whites more than Blacks because of the racial hierarchies within their own society, says McClain. Foreign-born Latinos have an even greater tendency to cite stereotypes of Blacks--"they can't be trusted; they're hard to get along with"--than native-born Latinos, adds McClain, who also tested whether these stereotypes and perceptions could have been transmitted to new immigrants from white southerners. That wasn't the case.
In Durham, N.C., only about 9 percent of whites in the sample had stereotypical views of Black Americans, she says. Just how much do Latinos identify as white?
McClain and colleagues launched a multi-phase study of Latino immigrants in the South. The first part studied Latino immigrants in Durham, where about 75 percent felt they had the most in common with whites and the least in common with Blacks. Blacks felt they had equally as much in common with Latinos and whites. Whites, by contrast, felt they had more in common with Blacks and least in common with Latinos. In the second phase of the study, McClain surveyed Latino immigrants in seven southern locations known as top "new destinations" for Latino immigrants.
In Little Rock, Ark., 75 percent of Latinos see themselves as "white"; about 55 percent of those in Memphis say the same thing, says McClain. In Durham, only about 36 percent see themselves as white; the majority see themselves as "other," but they still more closely align their identities with whites than Blacks.
Considering all this information, why does mainstream media assume Latinos and Blacks will vote together to build clout for their communities?
To listen to what McClain says about this and why dialogue is so important in moving beyond racial politics, click on the audio icon.
What Does It Mean for Election '08?
How will Latinos' tendency to identify with whites affect the election? Will race dominate partisanship? History tells us yes, which could mean trouble for Barack Obama. Consider these two examples:
- In 1996, Alex Penelas, a Cuban-American Democrat, edged Arthur Teele, a Black Republican, in a run-off election for mayor of Miami-Dade County, Fla., because of racial politics. Although 80 percent of Blacks in the county were registered Democrats and 60 percent of Latinos were registered Republicans, both groups abandoned party lines to vote for their race, opting to compromise political values over social ones. "This is an indication of the tensions that existed between those two groups--Cuban Americans and Black Americans--in that area, and the unwillingness to vote for the other candidate because of those tensions," says McClain. Find out more about the election.
- In 2001, middle-class Black voters in Houston helped propel the reelection of Mayor Lee Brown, a Black Democrat and the city's first Black mayor, who campaigned against Orlando Sanchez, a Cuban-American Republican who vied for a post as the city's first Latino mayor. Most of the Latinos in the city were Mexican American but voted for the Latino Republican candidate, despite intra-cultural divisions between Latinos from Mexico and Cuba.
In Nevada, Clinton won the Latino vote by more than 2 to 1, "despite the fact that the culinary workers that had endorsed Obama which was 40 percent Latino essentially didn't carry the Latino vote. Clinton just had most of that vote," says McClain, who predicts a similar dynamic in the California primary. There are several factors at play, including the Clintons' history with the Latino community, but there are these underlying tensions that undeniably play a role. Check out MSNBC's 2008 primary results for more.
Real Tensions?
What fuels the tensions between the Latino and Black communities? There's the perceived competition for jobs, for one thing. "Latino immigrants are not moving into middle-class Black and middle-class white neighborhoods or upper-class Black and upper-class white neighborhoods," says McClain. "They're moving into concentrated poverty Black neighborhoods, so the groups that are bumping up against each other more are in fact low-income Blacks, low-skilled, and these new low-skill low-education Latino immigrants."
It's not just jobs, however. "Not only do they feel they're losing jobs, but the educational system that they had fought so hard to integrate and become a part of and to try and make work for them were now seeing this other group coming in and resources being diverted from their kids to this group," says McClain.
In North Carolina, for example, the state legislature didn't allocate sufficient resources for non-native English speakers, despite an influx of immigration and enrollment of foreign-born Latino students, and school districts have to figure out how to make up the gap to educate these students who don't speak English.
"In the absence of additional funds from the state to cover this, local school districts then had to redistribute extant funds to these purposes and Black parents began to feel that they were taking resources away from Black students to be able to educate these individuals," says McClain.
Where Do We Go From Here?
How can a political candidate, especially a Black or Latino, broaden their appeal outside their own race, which they must do to win a national election? It starts with dialogue, which McClain says isn't happening. There are serious issues that need to be talked about that aren't getting the attention or platform they need.
To listen to McClain talk about the reaction she gets for talking about Latino-Black tensions, click on the audio icon.
"For Black politicians, it's a real bind," admits McClain. "No one wants to be identified with the minutemen and all these right-wing groups, because the reality is, this day it's anti-immigration, but the next day it's Blacks or some other group, so you can't certainly align yourself with them. But how can you frame the conversation that gets to concerns of your constituents without aligning yourself with people that are just despicable, and being able to still carry the Democratic Party banner on some issues? It's a real bind."
"There are lots of things that are happening at the local level that get masked in a national debate about Blacks and various Latino groups having a lot in common," adds McClain. Why won't they bring it up on the campaign trail? "It kind of goes against the mythical notion that all minority groups can join hands and walk side by side," she says.
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