Diversity and Political Representation: Overview

Introduction

American voters woke up on November 7, 2018, to the news that on the previous day, they had elected the most diverse slate of candidates in the nation’s history. These candidates were voted on by the most diverse set of voters in the nation’s history. According to a Washington Post analysis, over one in four voters was a person of color (about 27 percent), and more women and more lesbian, gay, and bisexual candidates were elected to the US Congress on November 6, 2018, than ever before. Muslim women, Native American women, women of Latin American descent (Latinas), and LGBTQ candidates made history in congressional and gubernatorial races.

While this diversity was widely noted and generally celebrated in the days after the election, it also spurred conversations about identity, inclusion, and representation. Even before the election, Yale University law professor Amy Chua was decrying “political tribalism,” the idea that increasing political diversity, and highlighting these differences, in a country rife with oppression and prejudice leads to more, not less, division. As Chua put it, “Almost no one is standing up for an America without identity politics, for an American identity that transcends and unites all the country’s many subgroups.” Others point to the danger of identifying primarily with race, ethnicity, gender, religion, and sexual orientation, rather than with the human experience in general. Still others argue that class and economic status are the primary agents of oppression and are erased by the focus on these other factors.

On the other hand, advocates argue, diversity in political representation ensures that traditionally underrepresented populations have a voice in government and that decision-making includes all Americans. It also inspires members of traditionally underrepresented groups to see a future life in political leadership for themselves. Though studies show that politicians from some groups, notably seniors, veterans, racial minorities, and women are more likely to intervene on behalf of another member of that group in the federal bureaucracy, advocates argue that this is a sign of a healthy system—one where all groups feel like they have a voice and politicians working in their interest. In addition, advocates point to the intersection of identities present in individuals. If, for example, a Black, LGBTQ woman raised in a poor community is in office, they argue she is a voice for a variety of perspectives on any given issue. It is reductionist, they argue, to assume that one identity is always paramount.

Understanding the Discussion

Color-blindness: The belief that racial differences are insignificant and have little influence on one’s decisions or actions.

Combahee River Collective: A Boston, Massachusetts–based Black lesbian feminist organization, active from 1974 to 1980. The collective was one of the first organizations to articulate the idea of identity politics, as they felt that White feminists could not understand or advocate for their concerns.

Identity politics: Political alliances formed around a certain commonly held identity or characteristic.

Polarization: In politics, the movement of political leanings to ideological extremes, used mainly to describe the increasing divergence of political parties.

History

The history of political representation in the United States is a history of primarily White, Anglo-Protestant men in power. Though some isolated members of other groups were sometimes able to achieve political office, the forces working against them were nearly insurmountable. The seventeen Black men who were voted into Congress in the Reconstruction period after the Civil War were marginalized and viewed with curiosity or, at times, disdain. Because of Jim Crow laws enacted in the post-Reconstruction South and racist intimidation campaigns, only a handful of Black members were elected between 1887 and 1901 and none again until 1929. Racist policies also defined which other races were considered US citizens, and thus allowed to vote and hold office, in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By January 2019, 162 African Americans, 128 Hispanic people, and 63 Asian and Pacific Islander Americans had taken office as members of Congress.

Jeanette Rankin, a committed suffragist and pacifist, was elected to the House of Representatives for Montana in 1917 (before women gained the vote nationally in 1920), on the eve of the US involvement in World War I. Rankin struggled to represent all her constituents and found the needs of her women’s suffrage colleagues often conflicted with those of her fellow pacifists. Until the 1980s, most of the women subsequently in Congress followed a male relative, either a father or deceased husband, and many were appointed, rather than elected, to the position. In 1960 there were seventeen female members of the House of Representatives, who, along with two female senators. The year 1992 was termed the Year of the Woman when twenty-seven women were elected to Congress, effectively doubling their numbers. Though racial and ethnic fluctuations sometimes obscure the lack of representation among various groups, women, who typically make up slightly more than half of the population, remained significantly underrepresented in Congress and the top echelons of state government by 2018.

For decades, the focus of civil rights agitation and human rights advocacy was on the commonalities and similarities of people across racial, gender, cultural, and class divides. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. famously dreamed that his children could live in a world where people were judged by their character and not their skin color. Influential political philosopher John Rawls invited Americans to envision a world where political decisions were made without “race, gender, religious affiliation, [or] wealth.” Through education and the breaking down of barriers between people, many activists felt that such differences could be erased or, at least, that prejudice around them could be eliminated. During this period, various overt expressions of racism and discrimination, including in housing and employment decisions, were outlawed. In the years after the landmark civil rights legislation of the 1960s and 1970s, however, discrimination did not disappear but in many cases became more subtle and systemic. In the late twentieth century, conservatives began to embrace the idea of “color-blindness” to deny ongoing discrimination, to resist continued efforts to address inequality, and to invoke this supposedly nonracist stance to preserve the status quo.

The division between those who believed that any politician, with sufficient empathy and understanding, could address the needs of constituents of any race or gender and those who believed that the key to ending oppression was working to ensure that people like them attained positions of political authority became clear by the end of the 1970s. The term “identity politics” was first articulated in 1977 by a group of Black feminist women known as the Combahee River Collective. In part, they stated that “this focusing upon our own oppression is embodied in the concept of identity politics. We believe that the most profound and potentially most radical politics come directly out of our own identity, as opposed to working to end somebody else’s oppression.” This point of view was considered quite radical for its time, and most politicians, still overwhelmingly White and male, continued to assert that they could effectively represent all their constituents, regardless of background, and argued that representative government is based on the idea that people from disparate backgrounds can be represented politically by one person. In 2004 then senator Barack Obama famously declared, “There’s not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America.”

Diversity and Political Representation Today

The Obama presidency, ironically, highlighted how far the United States was from reaching the ideals of postracial unity. As the first African American president, Obama himself became the subject of racist rhetoric, notably from the so-called birther movement that denied his citizenship. Incidents of police violence and racial profiling; the #MeToo movement and its exposure of continued sexual harassment, bias, and violence; and increased White supremacist activity all contributed to a shift away from postracial and postgender politics.

Americans are increasingly racially diverse. According to the Pew Research Center, non-Hispanic White people made up 84 percent of the population in 1965 but just 62 percent in 2015, whereas the proportions of Hispanics and Asians grew considerably over that same period, in large part due to immigration. Experts expect the shift to continue in coming decades, such that there will be no racial majority by midcentury. As the electorate is increasingly diverse, many voters are attracted to representation that mirrors them more closely. This has coincided with the increased visibility of White identity politics, as the hegemony of White political power is shaken. For many, the 2016 presidential election of Donald Trump—whose candidacy was supported by prominent White supremacists and whose policies around immigration, LGBTQ, and reproductive issues were widely seen as reactionary and discriminatory—further highlighted the need for greater diversity in political representation.

The 2018 midterm elections returned the most diverse group ever elected to Congress, widely seen as a rebuke to the policies of the Trump administration. In November 2018, 255 women stood for congressional seats, and for the first time, in January 2019, there were over 100 women in the US House of Representatives, with 102 seats. Among the forty-five women of color elected were two Muslims, two Native Americans, two African Americans, two Texan Latinas, and the youngest woman ever elected to Congress, all of whose elections marked historic firsts. Fourteen female senators were elected as well, bringing the total to twenty-five. Women also ran in sixteen gubernatorial races and claimed the governorship in nine. The 2018 election cycle was a landmark one for LBGTQ people as well: the LGBTQ Victory Fund reported that about 400 LGBTQ candidates ran for local, statewide, and national offices in November 2018 and more than 150 won their races.

Diversity in political office continued into the 2020s, including at the highest levels of government. Several high-profile campaigns by people of color took place during the 2020 presidential election. Among the large group of candidates running in the Democratic presidential primaries were Andrew Yang, an Asian American entrepreneur, and Cory Booker, a Black senator from New Jersey. The field also included several women, including California senator Kamala Harris and Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren, and Pete Buttigieg, an openly gay former mayor of South Bend, Indiana. Though Joe Biden was ultimately chosen as the Democratic nominee, defeating Trump in November, he chose Harris as his running mate. Harris thus became the first woman, the first African American, and the first South Asian American to become vice president. Furthermore, after taking office in January 2021, Biden pledged to fill his Cabinet with the most diverse group in US history. By February 2021, he had succeeded in that goal; 45 percent of Biden's picks for his Cabinet were women, while 55 percent were people of color—a marked increase over previous administrations. He also nominated Buttigieg as Secretary of Transportation, which made Buttigieg the first openly gay person to be confirmed to a president's Cabinet. Overall, the 2020 election resulted in more diversity at the state and local levels as well, with dozens of candidates from underrepresented backgrounds making history. These included Sarah McBride, who became the first transgender state senator in US history, and Cori Bush, who became the first Black woman to be elected as a state representative in Missouri. However, with international attention focused on the diversity of candidates, some questioned whether this focus on identity would further exacerbate disagreement and division, moving the country further away from the long-held dream of a nation of equals.

About the Author

Bethany Groff Dorau is a freelance writer, museum manager, and local historian, based in West Newbury, Massachusetts. She holds a bachelor of arts degree in history and sociology and a master of arts degree in history, both from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

These essays and any opinions, information, or representations contained therein are the creation of the particular author and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of EBSCO Information Services.

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