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Political scientists and communications scholars have long documented the tendency of the media to focus on "horse race" elections stories at the expense of policy analysis. In this paper I identify the emergence of the circus metaphor to characterize elections as a hybrid form of political theater, media spectacle, and tabloid justice journalism. I examine the relative number of horse race, circus/spectacle and policy stories on the 2003 recall of California Governor Gray Davis and election of actor Arnold Schwarzenegger as his replacement. I find that major California papers varied in the tone and substance of their coverage. All of the newspapers educated their readerships about the recall process. Ironically, the newspaper paper with the highest level of horse race stories also informatively compare and contrast campaigns. Circus/spectacle stories did not dominate coverage, but exceeded the number of articles focusing policy issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is part of a larger project designed to explore components of identity along the lines of race, gender and class in the process of mobilization and maintenance of social movements through the lens of the contemporary welfare rights movement. Welfare is a central organizing image of American political discourse around issues of race, class and gender. The most popular frame of this program is the ubiquitous stereotype of the "welfare queen" has generated a great deal of scholarly attention to the reaction of public and elites to these images and the policy consequences of such reactions. While research has been devoted to the efficiency of the welfare system, the construction of the stereotypes behind this program and how both public and elites respond, there is little scholarship related to how recipients and their allies have reacted to these images at a grassroots level. The welfare rights movement first emerged in the early 1960s with the rise in demands for expansion of poverty relief. The National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO), composed of mostly African American women, reached its peak in 1969 with 22,000 members. Although the NWRO disbanded in the early 1970s, the movement has endured despite challenges to the concept of welfare since that time and has continued through the current reauthorization process in 2004 of the 1996 act. This paper will focus on how the welfare rights movement has or has not developed strategies to respond to these images of welfare recipients through a comparison of two welfare rights organizations in Washington. The primary hypothesis asserts that identity-based social movements organized around a single, marginalized identity will fail to mobilize around a potentially negative frame that issue targets both the primary marginalized identity as well as other multiple marginalized identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper seeks to assess the impact of racial politics on the Reagan Administration’s first attempt to reform welfare. I focus on the changes made to the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program as part of the 1981 Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (OBRA). I argue that the importance of race in this policymaking episode was contingent on a structural redefining of America’s welfare politics that occurred during the Johnson and Nixon administrations. The paper briefly describes the emergence of this racially structured politics of welfare, consisting of three interrelated dimensions - partisan, interpretive, and institutional. It then analyzes the Reagan administration’s welfare policy reforms in their 1981 OBRA in each of these dimensions, using archival documents from the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. I conclude that the Reagan administration responded to the racial structure of welfare politics that they inherited from the 1960s & ‘70s, but that they were able to circumvent the institutional dimension of this structure through the innovation of the budget reconciliation act. By applying this structural perspective to welfare policymaking in the 1980s, I am able to demonstrate the importance of race in the Reagan administration’s efforts to reorient America’s welfare policy in a conservative direction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the national implications for broad public discourse on race stemming from a recent California ballot initiative that sought to ban the collection of most race and ethnicity data by state and local governments. In the last 25 years, California has emerged as an important staging ground for the rehearsal of contentious national debates about race, ethnicity and the state. Controversies in California over property taxes, affirmative action, bilingual education, and sentencing for repeat criminal offenders ("Three Strikes" policies) anticipated similar debates in many regions of the country. For this reason, I argue that the experience and outcome of Proposition 54, though soundly rejected by voters during the October 2003 gubernatorial recall election, holds important lessons for the themes investigated in this paper: (1) Emergent political strategies by civil rights organizations; (2) The trajectory of neoconservative activism around race; (3) the ideological parameters of future political discourse on race. In short, I argue that the layers of narratives, interpretations, and pronouncements witnessed during the Proposition 54 debate foreshadow an emerging framework for public debates about race that blends ideas of neoconservative anti-statism and privatization with multicultural appeals for recognition and acceptance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using retrospective voting as a foundation to see how voters reacted in 2008 to an Obama candidacy, this paper aims to look at whether or not voter behavior was profoundly affected by considerations of race. Did the issue of race cause voters to shift from using retrospective voting decisions to new considerations involving race? Or did traditional retrospective voting considerations hold up in 2008? This paper attempts to answer these questions. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research paper is an analysis of the historical legal construction of black racial identity of mixed black-white race individuals in America. In particular, I investigate how state legislatures in the United States constructed black racial identity through the enactment of laws and constitutional provisions. This research identifies the following two-part framework by which state legislatures historically used the language of the law to coerce mixed black-white race individuals to adopt a personal sense of collective identity with people of black African ancestry: (1) identification of mixed black-white race individuals and blacks/Negroes as constituting two separate racial groups yet speaking of them in the same blush and disadvantaging them the same, and (2) abandoning recognition of mixed black-white race individuals (mulattoes) as a distinct racial group from Negroes/blacks through the enactment of statutes that espoused the rule of hypodescent. To provide empirical support for this paper's thesis, a survey of statutes across all fifty states ranging from the colonial period up to the mid-1900s is conducted. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The public and constitutional debate over affirmative action has focused on the justice of the policy, obscuring an equally central debate over which groups are to be included. The American historical context of racial injustice has led courts, scholars, and citizens alike to entrench a restrictive black-and-white categorization of race that has incorporated the other "official minorities" partially and incoherently. The rise of mixed-race identity and multiculturalism discourse have at once strengthened the foundations of the racial justice policy agenda and exposed the contradictions of this very policy agenda. This paper analyzes the "who" question of affirmative action (that is, how do universities and governments go about deciding who the recipients of affirmative action will be?) and how one strand of "colorblind" entrepreneurs is beginning to contradictions in who is and isn't counted as affirmative action beneficiaries. The paper updates the existing research on affirmative action's racial classifications by examining the Supreme Court's 2003 Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger decisions on affirmative action at the University of Michigan along with the Court's 2007 Parents v. Seattle decision on voluntary school integration policies. I argue that the increased attention to the "who" question exposes affirmative action's legal vulnerabilities. The "social construction of race" analysis has the potential to wound affirmative action policy from not only those who want to bolster affirmative action and school integration policies but also from those who want to dismantle them. Supporters of affirmative action are partly responsible for this vulnerability. The taken-for-granted, quiet method by which affirmative action beneficiaries were casually expanded via bureaucratic channels leaves gaping contradictions waiting to be exploited by critics of affirmative action. On the other hand, pro-affirmative action legal entrepreneurs have insulated affirmative action well from its predicted demise thus far by rooting the policy in the diversity rationale. The constitutional status of affirmative action and school integration policies may be at a crossroads. The diversity rationale has thus far insulated affirmative action from its predicted demise before the Supreme Court. The Court's continuing scrutiny of affirmative action policy methods has paradoxically bred new strains of affirmative action that appear to be resistant to judicial attack. Whether the same is the case for school integration policy remains to be seen. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For decades scholars have argued that race plays a critical role in elections. Following the work of Howell and Perry (2004), this paper applies the performance model to the local level where citizens have the opportunity to judge the conditions in their city on a daily basis and feel more affected by these conditions than by abstract concepts at the state and national level. This paper examines the city of New Orleans under the leadership of African-American mayor Ray Nagin both before and after Hurricane Katrina. Although citizen perceptions of life in their city should have a major impact on their approval or disapproval of their mayor regardless of race - especially following the hurricane - this does not appear to be the case. In fact, despite perceptions that crime has increased, job opportunities are lacking, and the quality of education is poor, race is the only variable that achieved statistical significance demonstrating that approval of Mayor Ray Nagin varied by the race of the respondent with black respondents being more likely to approve of the mayor. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Works like that of Smith (1997) and Almaguer (1994) have shown the degree to which white supremacy and an ascriptive understanding of citizenship have been present since America's founding. In California, that process was complicated by the facts that the state was multi-racial from its inception and that the new American citizenship structure had to be imposed atop one that already existed. In this paper, I explore how Native American citizenship was defined in the Mexican and American periods, and how that definition limited their exercise of rights within the state of California during the first decades following annexation. To do so, I explore state laws and legal rulings relating to questions of Native American citizenship during the 19th century. I define citizenship to include protection of life, property, and formal voting rights. I find that the construction of Native Americans as either ‘children’ in need of government care or as ‘savage’ enemies of the state affected which level of government dealt with them. This dichotomous treatment had important effects on Native Americans' ability to have a formal voice and place within the post-annexation California social, political, and economic landscapes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the epic battle over affirmative action, the proponents are now beginning to claim victory in light of Grutter v. Bollinger. The colorblind conservative movement had enjoyed tremendous momentum in the mid- to late-1990s. How, then, did the colorblind momentum grind to such a rapid halt? This paper uncovers how colorblind conservatives have become marginalized from the broader conservative movement now that the Republican Party, corporations, and the military have largely come to accept affirmative action. As affirmative action is becoming increasingly institutionalized, the policy is transforming into a more conservative policy that is rooted in a diversity management, rather than anti-discrimination, logic. The colorblind movement has itself transformed over the past generation in two key dimensions. First, it is led by articulate men of color and women rather than by white men. Second, these minority conservatives have retreated from calling for Darwinian meritocracy, instead supporting creative, disadvantaged-based affirmative action reforms. This latest chapter in the affirmative action drama reveals neither a simple cooptation of affirmative action by the right nor a clear-cut affirmative action victory for the left. Instead, a political, cultural, and policy transformation is underway, culminating in the unlikely marriage of (a) a liberal policy that has lost much of its liberal core and (b) conservative institutions that have lost some of their conservative roots. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do conservative Presidents use welfare state retrenchment to make political appeals, and in particular to reach conservative whites on the basis of the sensitive subject of race? This paper examines claims that the Reagan administration's welfare retrenchment efforts were organized around a political agenda that sought to take advantage of the racial animosities of southern whites and northern white ethnics. Applying Pierson's (1994) approach to the politics of welfare state retrenchment, I focus on the administration's most successful effort to cut the federal welfare state: the 1981 Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, examining the retrenchment strategies of obfuscation, division and compensation. Pierson's approach to welfare retrenchment is modified by the recognition that the racialized nature of welfare politics in the 1980s was integral to the administration's political successes in this area. For each of these strategies, race was of great importance in shaping retrenchment. While I find that the Reagan administration maintained a racially neutral public presentation in their public and private discussions of these budget cuts, I also find a somewhat consciously articulated but fragmented political agenda focused on conservative white southern democrats and northern working- and lower-middle-class whites. This is contrasted with an almost complete absence of concern over the disproportionate harm that African Americans faced as a result of their agenda. Most telling, the administration responded to the criticisms of their budget cuts by African-American leaders through a combination of silences and symbols, offering very little in the way of direct material or procedural rewards for African Americans. Taken as a whole, the pattern of welfare state retrenchment, political appeals to whites, silence on racial implications, and symbolic appeals provide a compelling portrait of the racialized quality of the Reagan administration's welfare cuts in 1981. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the influence of homeownership upon public policy attitudes and quality of life assessments for individuals in Southern California. We find that status as a homeowner does appreciably influence individual attitudes. Further, our results show that homeownership status may trump race/ethnic identification in attitude formation in Southern California [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A wealth of scholarship has addressed the connections among legal categorization and regulation, subordinated identity, and the process of political development in the United States. This scholarship has done much to articulate the path of Supreme Court doctrine regarding race, gender, and sexual orientation, to highlight the significance of national regulations concerning immigration and citizenship, to narrate the constitutional competition between ascriptive and expansive conceptions of citizenship, and to explain the construction of subordinated identities in broad legal dimensions. While such scholarship has greatly enhanced our understandings of both identity and constitutional/political development, it misses a significant point due to its national location. Since the Civil War, we have considered citizenship to be a national, rather than state-based phenomenon, but many of the specifics of ascriptive conceptions of citizenship have been worked out on the state, rather than national level. When we note that for most of the history of the United States, such significant issues as voting, education, marriage, familial relations, and residence have been primarily within the province of state law, we see that the states are far from irrelevant in establishing the grounding context for citizenship and identity, especially when subordinated identities are centered in our research. Using race as an example of an identity constructed on the ground level in significant part by state law, this paper will argue for a more comprehensive approach to studying political development that incorporates study of state-based regulations that have had significant impacts both on the generation of subordinated identities and on the struggle between egalitarian and ascriptive conceptions of citizenship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While it is becoming well known that numerous Fortune 500 companies have contributed to the defense of affirmative action against "colorblind" ballot initiatives and litigation over the past dozen years, less attention has been paid to the funding sources behind the anti-affirmative ballot measure and litigation efforts. This paper examines the conservative individuals and foundations that have bankrolled anti-affirmative action ballot initiatives across the country, beginning with California's Proposition 209 in 1996. Whereas the new generation of colorblind entrepreneurs has wisely packaged its cause as a grassroots movement that is moderate, compassionate, and even supportive of class- and disadvantaged-based reforms, the philanthropists financing this colorblind cause represent the highly controversial, old guard of racial conservatives. While Ward Connerly and allied "colorblind" entrepreneurs are not tools of these right-wing foundation patrons, the tenuous affair between the public entrepreneurs and the private donors they shield from the limelight raises concerns about the capacity of a small and elite faction to quietly finance a backlash against racial justice policies. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been much discussion about the race factor in the 2008 Democratic presidential contest. This contemporary journalistic and political debate has sparked interest in a scholarly literature that has debated for some time the question of discrimination against African American candidates. This paper contributes to these twin debates. It asks whether Barack Obama is more vulnerable to negative attack than a comparable white candidate. Using an experiment implemented with a national sample of whites in real time during the early phase of the 2008 Presidential campaign, we find that the answer is a qualified "yes". We draw implications for Obama's campaign and for black candidates and the "race card" more generally. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The conceptual approaches to Latino identity in current scholarship fail to capture the relational dynamics of racialization and agency in the formation of this panethnic identity. As "Latino" is a panethnic category, it can be a complementâ??and in some cases, a discursive replacementâ??to ethnic-specific identities like "Mexican-American" or "Puerto Rican." Nevertheless, the Latino category has been dissected in scholarly circles as subsuming a host of ethnic, linguistic, regional, citizenship, and phenotypic differences. Many proclaim the Latino category as so diverse as to be a problematic and perhaps superficial category. Some observers conclude that the diverse and encompassing nature of panethnicity positions Latinos as a de-racialized and externally imposed grouping that may eventually disintegrate; instead, those currently seen as "Latino" may eventually conform to the binary poles of black and white racial groupings. However, I argue that ascribed identificationâ??racialization and visible markersâ??and the assertion of agencyâ??individual identity affirmation and organizational mobilizationâ??produce oppositional racial consciousness that provides a basis for politically resonant panethnic identity and coalitions. That is, at least some sector of those identified as Latino choose it as a racial identity, a decision that has decidedly political implications. My work will thus seek to answer the following research questions: What is the nature of the racialized discourses that emerge around the Latino identity and community in Los Angeles? How and to what extent do these racialized discourses affect identity formation and organizational strategies? What are the political implications of affirming or mobilizing based on panethnic identity as opposed to other identity articulations? My approach accounts for articulations of racial identity among Latinos. In order to test my hypothesis that a sense of racial solidarity spurs panethnic identity and coalition building, I will largely employ methodologies of discourse analysis, content analysis, and ethnography. This paper is a presentation of my dissertation proposal, as well as a discussion of my preliminary findings. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Central to the study of representation is the role of the race of the representative and how to best afford representation for minority groups. This paper examines member behavior in the 108th session of the House of Representatives on immigration-related bills to assess whether Latino members offer a greater degree of representation than non-Latino members for Latino constituents. Using a quantitative analysis, I construct a data set from the legislative record to analyze different types of actions, including roll-call votes, bill introduction, bill sponsorship, and house resolutions. Controlling for the racial composition of the district, party, and several other possible factors, I find key differences between the actions of Latino and non-Latino members. Most importantly, Latino members of Congress engage in more representation acts that favor immigration than their non-Latino counterparts. The findings have implications for how we measure and evaluate substantive representation and the value of minority members in Congress. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on the election of under-represented groups to legislatures under different electoral systems has reached divergent conclusions depending on the cases studied. Women have been found to be more successful in multimember systems, while racial and ethnic minorities have seemed to benefit from single member district systems, yet the theories offered to explain these results should apply to all under-represented groups. Using data on United States cities and New Zealand legislative elections we draw these conclusions into a cohesive story. We find that Multimember district systems increase diversity, but only when parties are organized in competition. Single member district systems can increase diversity only when under-represented groups are highly segregated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spending preferences affect the extent to which a mode of social control will be exacted upon legal subjects; thus, the amount of funding appropriated for specific programs is a direct representation of a government's preferred mode of social control. States, however, have limited resources, making the relationships between instruments of social control, conceptualized here as corrections spending, critical to understanding government policy preferences As such, our central research question is: How can we explain variation in the prioritization of corrections spending in the American states for the past two decades? To address this question, we aim to advance two areas of inquiry on social control. First, while scholars have noted a dramatic development of the ‘Prison Industrial Complex’ , little research has been devoted to determining particular patterns of state prioritization of corrections. Second, we recognize that social control is a primary function of state government. Thus, we examine the collective preferences of state decision-makers in the area of corrections outlays via a priority index. Drawing on public policy literature, we test structural and institutional factors, such as partisanship, the institutional role of governors, unemployment, crime rates, socioeconomic inequality, and population density. Social control literature on prisons often places race and racism at the center of analysis; therefore, we pay special attention the role that race plays within each state. In order to test this explanation, we examine state outlays data for the period from 1984–1999. We empirically verify that not only did overall spending on corrections increase throughout that time period, but also that corrections spending grew in its importance compared to other budget areas. The key findings of our time series, cross-sectional analysis are that increased populations of African Americans as well as increased inequality leads to greater prioritization of corrections spending. Political and institutional factors do not contribute to our explanation in statistically significant terms. Theoretically, these findings serve to tighten the link between the relatively disparate literatures of social control and race politics with public policy on the political dynamics of prison expansion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines emancipation of properties and people during post-Civil War era in the southern part of the U.S. The author explained that the law of property provides continuity and intentionality in moments and final silence. Other topics were also discussed including the slavery of African Americans and several cases of interracial conflicts.

While the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution has been interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court to protect African American civil rights since the 1950s, it was first cited as protective of gay and lesbian civil rights only in 1996. This work analyzes the new social construction of gay and lesbian civil rights within the historical context of African American civil rights. I find that such a comparative analysis is key to understanding contemporary debates relating to same-sex marriage, since same-sex marriage policy is richly based upon the historical struggle in U.S. society to recognize interracial marriage. Furthermore, though the complicated hierarchy of legal case scrutiny created in recent decades by the Court seems incompatible with democracy and indicates to us that Fourteenth Amendment values of equal protection and due process cannot be taken at face value in the American system of government, I find that the Court's new inclusion, albeit limited, of gays and lesbians in the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment shows us that the U.S. Constitution can still be a significant and promising source of rights. The Court now understands sexuality, like race, as a fixed characteristic. By constructing gays and lesbians as a legal entity in need of protection, the Court is making it easier for them to challenge discrimination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In today's advertising frenzy, the added factor of a growing Latino constituency has changed the way candidates approach elections. Political rhetoric and campaign advertisements can no longer ignore this new development and many candidates are spending an increasing amount of their time and funds to woo the Latino community. Some scholars have noted that, compared to Anglo candidates, minority candidates are more committed to addressing minority community needs (Baker 1996; Pachon & DeSipio 1992). Others have noted the differing styles among minority politicians themselves (Canon 1999, Fenno 2003, Tate 2003). But are these findings generalizable to Latino candidates? Race in the United States is often constructed in a black-white paradigm, so how do Latino candidates negotiate this terrain? What appeals do they make to their constituents? How is this conditioned by the make-up of their districts or the quality of candidates in those elections? This study examines the differing campaign strategies in terms of rhetoric and advertising between Latino candidates and others who face an increasingly "bilingual" public electorate. Likewise, the use of Spanish language advertising is examined in comparison to English advertising in the same market. The primary data for this study were gathered by the Campaign Media Analysis Group (CMAG). Other sources of data we use include electoral outcomes and district composition, which have been collected and merged to the unique data made available by CMAG. Our findings speak to the growing reality of Latino participation and activism, showing how racial identities can be constructed in political campaigns, and how Latino and Anglo voters respond to these messages. In effect, it seems that while modern day candidates continue to kiss babies and wave enthusiastically, they are also beginning to learn "Las Mananitas" in order to avoid the sunset. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social capital theory, particularly the work of Robert Putnam, has received a great deal of scholarly and popular attention. We argue that Putnam's formulation ignores the ways in which race is fundamental and constitutive to the structure and function of social capital in the United States. We suggest an alternative framework, one that: (1) treats race as more than an independent variable; (2) addresses the structural factors underlying social capital development; and (3) includes the role of gatekeepers in the process. Such a framework would allow us to have a more accurate, and more nuanced, understanding of how social capital operates in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the origins of welfare's rocky relationship with the politics of race, and argues for a broader conception of American political development in explaining the building of the U.S. welfare state, a conception that embraces unorthodox conceptions of the "institution". I examine the 1962 and 1967 amendments to the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program, and argue that they provide a window into an essentially important moment in the development of welfare policy in the United States, a moment in which welfare took on new meanings within the public sphere, meanings emphasizing its racialized identity, and emphasizing new expectations for poor mothers. I argue that this set of meanings constituted a new, and important component in the institutional identity of welfare. The paper utilizes a number of methods to assess the role of racial politics in affecting this change in welfare policy: a content analysis of New York Times coverage of welfare in these years; a review of public opinion towards welfare at the beginning and end of the 1960s; an analysis of congressional party and ideological majorities during the 87th and 90th congresses; and an analysis of the legislative histories of these two policymaking efforts. I conclude that the 1962 amendments were made without the influence of racial politics, but that the 1967 amendments were clearly influenced by the pressures flowing from the racial politics of that time. Moreover, I argue that this process was embedded in a new, cultural understanding of the politics of welfare that would have an impact on subsequent welfare policymaking, much as the construction of institutions influences subsequent policymaking initiatives within their range of responsibility and power. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes differences in print media coverage of Hurricane Andrew in Florida in 1992 and Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf Coast in 2005. I examine the primary narratives and language used to describe the victims of each hurricane, and conclude that the media coverage of Hurricane Katrina played upon pre-existing, racist stereotypes. Most notably, the racially charged Looter Frame was much more popular during Katrina than Andrew, despite comparable levels of this behavior after both storms. The paper also examines how media coverage affected perceptions and assistance of victims after Hurricane Katrina. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contemporary colorblind movement projects a simple, concise vision of what it opposes: namely, race-based affirmative action. This paper draws attention to the many shades within the colorblind movement and the blurry lines that make it difficult to distinguish the colorblind movement from the race-based affirmative action movement. This paper demonstrates that the reformist wing of the colorblind movement has come to strategically embrace class-based affirmative action as a remedy. In doing so, the reformist wing has undercut much of the orthodox wingÂ’s insistence on meritocracy, narrowly defined as admitting the most qualified and most deserving based on grades and test scores. The reformist wing of the colorblind movement has profited by thrusting men of color and women as its new leaders, which shelters the movement from accusations of perpetuating white male privilege. In the end, the rhetoric of both the activists who support and oppose race-based affirmative action have converged. The leading voices on both sides now voice compassion for the disadvantaged and support class-based or disadvantaged-based affirmative action. Both sides now tend to couch their policy reforms more through the language of opportunity, access, and diversity and less through the conservative language of merit and desert or the liberal language of group equality of outcome, reparation, and compensation. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact multiculturalism has had on the positions, rhetoric and actions of the two major political parties in the United States, analyzing the transformation of party platforms, the rhetoric of candidate acceptance speeches, the onset of multicultural party-building strategies, and changes in party convention rules. Since its onset in the late 1960s, the concept of multiculturalism has had a significant impact on American political culture, public policy, and politics. At the same time, the multicultural population of the United States is a political reality, and as the country's racial and ethnic minority populations continue to grow, particularly in large, politically significant states, both political parties have had to assess their future growth potential and determine their political positions, rhetoric, and actions accordingly. Although there are many levels on which multicultural party politics can be studied, this paper is concerned only with how multiculturalism has been injected into presidential party politics. In particular, this paper will address the following questions: What impact has multiculturalism had on party platforms, presidential candidate rhetoric, party-building strategy, and party rules? How, if at all, has the onset of multiculturalism altered party politics in the United States? ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows how reliance on liberalism has not historically and is unlikely in the future to provide the necessary normative edge for a progressive politics of race. Reading the history of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries as a progression from an initial rejection of idealized liberal equality to a simple liberal triumph to a final backlash fails to see racialized mobilizations of the process of legal dynamism. The paper uses three examples -- equality in the late nineteenth century, neutrality in the early twentieth century, and color blindness in the 1960s -- to illustrate the racialized mobilization of the legal process. It ends with a comparison of Perez v. Sharp and Loving v. Virginia to suggest an alternative model for legal change. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the literature on exclusion in Locke's Second Treatise: Macphearson, Pateman, and Mehta in order to understand the roots of liberal racial exclusion. Employing Foucault's notion of an "empirico-transcendental doublet" to illustrate a generalized problem of man in the modern episteme, I conclude that Locke's Treatise is not racially exclusive, but that it's qualification of "reason" provides the framework for liberal racial exclusion in the centuries that follow. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While recent theoretic work on American political development has addressed the difficult challenges in conceptualizing change processes (Pierson, 2004; Lieberman, 2002), scholars of race within the context of American political development have been more intent on describing the stable state institutional arrangements that have effectively contained racial divisions in different periods (King and Smith, 2005; Smith, 1997; Lieberman, 1998). While there are no inherent conflicts between these two areas of historical-institutional scholarship, a bridge between these two important areas of scholarship can provide new insights into ways that racial politics can limit the choices available to political innovators during times of rapid social and political change. This paper provides an example of how such a bridge might be constructed through a study of the forces involved in producing the political controversy surrounding Assistant Secretary of Labor Daniel P. MoynihanÂ’s Report on the Negro Family and President JohnsonÂ’s address at Howard University, co-authored by Moynihan. I argue that these two important documents were at the center of national politics surrounding the intersection of race and welfare in 1965. Taken together, their power to arouse so much controversy is best understood as a product of their connections with a growing tendency to link federal programs aimed at addressing poverty with racial politics. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the development of policy narratives in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Based on the ideas of policy design (Schneider and Ingram) and policy images (Baumgartner and Jones), I show that a broader “policy narrative,” which is built on a policy image and its supporting rhetoric, can be a very powerful motivator among residents in a particular geographic region. In this case, the city’s three largest ethnic groups—whites, blacks, and Latinos—each used different narratives to justify their positions on school desegregation policy. Blacks and whites focused on the language of academic quality and race relations to explain why they did or did not support busing for desegregation. Latinos attempted to join the primary black and white narratives, but were not able to reframe either discussion to fit their own community’s needs. Because they were never a significant part of the discussion, Latinos today, though they comprise the vast majority of the district’s students, do not benefit from post-desegregation district policies as much as the other two groups do. Thus, not only can policy narratives be developed and used by the general public (as opposed to political elites), but a group’s skills in using these narratives can also have a significant impact on the level of resources they later gain from public institutions. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the result of the 2008 U.S. Presidential elections. The author says that based on the American National Election Studies (ANES) data of 2008, U.S. President Barack Obama did not meet the expectations for his margin of victory. He adds that though racial attitude affected the results, it did not prevent the victory of President Barack Obama.

The article discusses the influence of race in an organization and how, as interest groups, could have an effect on their immigration platforms. It cites the internal struggles of three groups, the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organization (AFL-CIO), the Sierra Club and the Christian Coalition, toward establishing a platform on immigration issues. It cites the changing alliances forged by these groups, as well as their internal struggles to advance their objectives.

This paperr shows how the intersection of religion and race in the middle of the 19th century created, and then diffused, a sense of secular morality among Americans that not only solidified racial hierarchies but also aligned working class consciousness with the demands of industrialization. This chapter makes one empirical and four theoretical contributions. First, it provides empirical evidence that shows how religion was implicit in the construction of class and race identities in the mid-19th century America, a hitherto unrecognized link in the field of American Development. Secondly, it shows that by looking at the intersection of religion and race we can discover the diffusion of religion as a political force into the larger society beyond the active religious citizenry, something we would have missed had we observed them in isolation from each other. Thirdly, it shows that the intersection of discourses can often have the unintended consequence of dampening their emancipatory potential, like evangelical religion's champion of people's free-will against predestination, and instead produce new discourses of inclusion/exclusion, in this instance the discourse of white racial superiority. Fourth, it shows how people's daily cultural practices is a preeminently political space where even the most political of identities, that of citizenship, is being tested. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the legal rhetoric of color-blind constitutionalism in the post-Civil Rights era. It is not intended as a new defense of affirmative action, nor is it principally concerned with taking a position either for or against color-blindness as such - as do most writers on this topic. Because ours is a society in which race matters in ways that are routinely relevant to the ordinary operation of the law, constitutional prohibitions against racial classifications in fact serve to elevate race to a uniquely unmentionable status and specifically distinguish it from other legally unproblematic classifications. Consequently, I argue that the Court's current commitment to color-blindness is itself inseparable from the racial logic it so vocally condemns. In re-articulating civil rights discourse in defense of existing racial hierarchy, color-blindness ought to be understood as a particular form of color-consciousness rather than an alternative to it. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The chapter explores the usefulness of intersectionality theory (Hancock, 2006) in U.S. institutional politics by examining the interaction between Quakerism and racialism within the interventionist work of the Lake Mohonk Conference of Friends of the Indian and Other Dependent Peoples (LMC) in the context of U.S. insular territorial politics in the first two decades of the 20th century. The chapter reveals how Quaker values, principles and methods were inextricably linked to and at times mediated racialized political thinking associated with overseas territorial administration and liberal citizenship debates vis-à-vis non-white peoples in U.S. overseas territorial possessions. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A substantial body of research has examined the influence priming in campaigns, utilizing hypothetical candidates and elections to study bias in elections. The presidential race between Barack Obama and John McCain provides an opportunity to study the influence of priming in the context of a historic election. The 2008 campaign consisted of a number of interesting contrasts on salient dimensions between the two candidates; namely, race, and age. This study seeks to understand how age and racial primes altered evaluations of McCain and Obama. We address this issue using an original experimental design. with subjects randomly assigned to one of three conditions: implicit racial prime, implicit age prime, and control. We find that the effects of implicit racial and age-related cues are mediated by an individual's previously help stereotype beliefs. These findings have implications for the role of race, and stereotypes generally in campaigns. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the problems and prospects of the Voting Rights Act and its impact on racial minorities in the U.S. The empirical evidence concerning voting technology, residual votes and the disenfranchisement of African American voters is explored. Several cases that challenge a variety of voting practices under section 2 of the law are analyzed. The article presents justifications for why the racial gap in lost votes should be actionable under Section 2.

The article explains the transformation of welfare policies in the U.S. by employing social construction theory. It specifically addresses the question of how the concept of race shape the elite debate over welfare reform in Congress. Three main accounts for the emergence of the contrived link between race and welfare in the U.S. policy discourse are discussed, which include a historical analysis of policymaking at the national level, and a social constructionist view of the application of white racist attitudes into notions and work and issue.

The article presents a discussion about racism and institutional discrimination in the U.S. It is noted that racism is a belief or value system while discrimination refers to the result of organizational decisions impacting race. It is asserted that changes in laws and culture have lessened but not eliminated racism.

The article discusses the impact of race and dependence on political thought in the U.S. It is noted that dependence influenced the creation of liberal and republican traditions and social construction of race in the country. It is asserted that male heads of households, before the civil war, were the only ones that have political rights.

This article deals with a study that examined the impact of the racial demographics of congressional staff on members' vote choice. Data used in this study came from a sample of 211 offices in the U.S. House of Representatives. The study also used four different measures of roll call votes in Congress. Results of the study showed that black members and elite black staffs have a negative impact toward measures that are traditionally used to demonstrate representation for the black community.

This article discusses a study which examined the bill sponsorship of Black and White state legislators in a bid to assess the extent to which race-related issues are substantively addressed in the Ohio legislature. Results of the study showed that there were no significant differences between Black female and male legislators regarding the introduction of racial justice legislation. Civil rights issues and urban education are key concerns influencing the bill introductions of Black legislators.

We present and examine the notion of comparative racial affect within the context of theories found in the literature. Our analysis supports several distinct threads of research, which we would argue is evidence of a complex model of prejudice. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay brings race as a Montesquieuan principle to bear on an Arendtian problematic of foundation through the question of the social and political position of blacks in the United States. I interpret the founding and the civil rights movement as two foundational moments in which racial principles were institutionalized with respect to constitutional structures of authority. Positing that social and political divisions and conflicts are constitutive of polities, I contend most generally that principles as constitutional elements condition which forms of conflict are authorized to appear within the specifically political realm. More specifically, I describe race as a principle of rule at the time of founding and race as a principle of faring-well during the civil rights movement in order to demonstrate that the institutionalizations contextualizing the former had the effect of de-legitimizing racial conflict and the institutionalizations surrounding the latter had the opposite effect of legitimizing it. This examination of a historical shift in terms of racial principle and constitutional structure I claim reveals a foundational change in terms of polity type. Although "the United States is not a nation-state in the European sense and never was" (Arendt), I conclude that a distinctively American nation-state emerged from the civil rights movement which came to modify and overlay the federal-republic originally founded. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In most big cities, the chief of police is a political player in his own right, reliant on public support. Data from two polls of Los Angeles residents constitute a unique dataset to consider the determinants of public support for the chief of police in a large, heterogeneous urban setting. The surveys were conducted in 2002 and 2007 when a different chief of police was nearing the end of his first five-year term of office - one African American and one white. Taken together, the surveys present an opportunity to examine how public support for police chiefs of different racial origins varies among racial and ethnic groups. We examine how individuals' demographic traits, socio-political attitudes, and area crime rates - in combination with the police chief's racial identity - contribute to public support for the chief of police. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do white voters' construct evaluations of non-white candidates, especially when they are cued to focus upon race? This question has moved into the forefront of national politics during the 2008 Presidential election. Using a unique dataset of the Obama-Keyes 2004 Illinois Senate election, we analyze how racialized portrayals of Barack Obama influenced how white voters evaluated him as a candidate for Senate. The analysis focuses upon Democratic and Republican partisans and how they react differently to constructing their evaluations of Obama. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article applies neoinstitutional organization theory to uncover the central role of university officials in institutionalizing aggressive, race-based affirmative admissions procedures at three selective public universities from the late 1970s until the early 1990s. During this second stage of affirmative action, admissions and diversity officials at UC-Berkeley, UT-Austin, and UW-Madison began institutionalizing the diversity justification, the method of individual assessment, and the targeting of peculiar subsets of "official minorities." At a time of increasing judicial and executive scrutiny and skepticism of affirmative action, university officials began building a model of diversity management from the discourses of identity politics and multiculturalism. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can ideological inconsistency in legislators' voting records be explained by the uncertainty they have about their constituents? Why does a two-dimensional model of roll-call voting explain the votes of some legislators better than others? We present an uncertainty-based theory of legislative search and ideologically inconsistent voting. We test this theory by examining whether U.S. senators' levels of uncertainty about their constituents leads to higher levels of inconsistent voting in Congress. Specifically we compare senators who faced large shifts in the racial makeup of their electorate due to enfranchisement with senators from more stable constituencies. We also examine other factors related to legislator uncertainty, such as legislators' backgrounds. We find that uncertainty due to black enfranchisement and uncertainty due to legislators' backgrounds both lead to higher ideological inconsistency among U.S. senators. Our results suggest that what some call "maverick" behavior by elected officials can be better characterized as best responses to a changing environment. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"How could America have combined such a substantial degree of popular domestic violence with such a high degree of political stability?" Richard HofstadterINTRODUCTIONThe widespread practice of lynchings after the Civil War in the South raises a question that has yet to be adequately answered: why did the federal government initially prosecute lynchers and then for the most part stop, only to then resume prosecuting lynchers approximately eighty years later? In other words, why was the law enforced intermittently? Examining this question will shed light on how to integrate and frame the existence of illiberal acts within a liberal regime. Abandoning Rogers Smith's separatist argument made in his seminal article in APSR , I will provide a framework based on the implicit assertion contained in Smith's more integrationist claim made in his book Civic Ideals that liberalism and illiberalism might somehow be imbricated with one another. Although he does not provide an adequate framework for the weaker argument, via the examination of lynching, I hope to provide a framework that can illustrate exactly how these 'multiple traditions' were imbricated at a particular moment in time. HISTORICAL BACKGROUNDIt is still unclear what exactly constitutes a lynching and what are the exact number of lynchings. Even amidst the statistical disarray, there consistently is a disproportionate amount of lynchings of black men in former Confederate states. The regional and racial differences led many to conclude that there is something unique about the South in general and with blacks in particular: "Lynching, like slavery and segregation, was not unique to the South, but it assumed proportions and a significance there that were without parallel elsewhere." LITERATURE REVIEW There have primarily been two ways of framing the government's policy with regards to lynching. 1) The state ignored the fact that lynchings were occurring because they were either indifferent to and/or incapable of dealing with lynchers or 2) The state somehow implicitly sanctioned lynchings. Option #1 reflects the notion that the U.S. was a 'weak 'state. Option #2 reflects the notion that the U.S. was an apartheid regime. Whereas there is compelling evidence in support of both claims, neither claim by itself is sufficient in explaining lynching. Whereas the weak state thesis glares over the fact that many government officials purposefully chose to allow lynchings to occur, the apartheid analogy asserts that it was state who were doing most of the lynching. The weak state thesis understates state complicity and the apartheid analogy overstates state complicity. A more historically accurate framework is needed that involves the complicity of political authorities to tolerate lynching without necessarily implicating said authorities into having to be accountable for that complicity. We need something that Leon Friedman described as a "framework of contrived anarchy." RESEARCH HYPOTHESISI argue that the particular political configuration between 1883 and 1938 was constitutional anarchy. Constitutional anarchy refers to a constitutional configuration that enabled a 'normative state' of the rule of law to create a semi-autonomous, localized 'anomalous zone.' Drawing from Ernst Fraenkel's model of the dual state and Gerald Neuman's concept of anomalous zones, I intend to demonstrate that the U.S. during this period carved out a legally bounded region of lawlessness... ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]