Studies of black–Latino relations in American politics have focused extensively on the mass and local levels (e.g., Edward Telles et al., eds., Just Neighbors? Research on African American and Latino Relations in the United States, 2011), and have found compelling though not uniform evidence of intergroup conflict (one oft-cited example being Nicolas Vaca, The Presumed Alliance: The Unspoken Conflict between Latinos and Blacks and What It Means for America, 2004). Against this backdrop, Rodney Hero and Robert Preuhs take up the “central goal of describing and assessing” black–Latino elite relations in national politics, seeking to illuminate “whether those relations are most often characterized by conflict, independence, cooperation, or something else” (p. 1).
Black–Latino Relations in U.S. National Politics dexterously achieves these objectives, uncovering extensive “nonconflict”—specifically “independence”—among black and Latino national elites. A “non-zero sum” dynamic entailing “basic agreement of ideology but difference of interests” (pp. 95, 19), independence is not overt cooperation (pp. 24, 68, 125). While periodically demonstrating “a modicum of mutual support” (p. 145), black and Latino elites largely “emphasize particular policy areas and advocate specific outcomes on their own … apart from one another” (p. 22). Having delineated this alternative to the conflict-coalition dichotomy, Hero and Preuhs assess its foundations. Without foreclosing other explanations, they convincingly tie independence and nonconflict to federalism, particularly the policy questions, and distinct roles of party, ideology, and logrolling, in national versus urban politics. Through the data, questions, and findings it offers, the book makes important contributions to research on minority politics and representation broadly writ.
The authors’ first contribution is specifying five materials as data to systematically observe black–Latino elite relations. Chapters 3 and 4 study materials from black and Latino national advocacy groups: testimony at congressional hearings (1970–2000); Supreme Court amicus briefs (1974–2004); and scorecards (1997–2004) from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and National Hispanic Leadership Agenda (NHLA). While testimony partly reflects congressional invitation (pp. 58, 66), brief filing is self-selecting. Scorecards may even better capture group priorities (p. 100). Chapter 5 turns to black and Latino congressmembers’ roll call votes (1995–2004), which may reveal conflict not found in testimony, briefs, and scorecards if the electoral connection makes representatives more “beholden to, localized geographic interests than are … advocacy groups” (p. 115). Chapter 7 studies public statements on welfare reform, education, voting rights, immigration, and free trade from the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC), and advocacy groups. The authors acknowledge questions of whether elites reflect citizen-level politics, perhaps more amply than necessary given the book’s goals. The data well suit the book’s aim of analyzing “black–Latino relations within (national) governing institutions” rather than within the mass public (p. 45).
Quantitative and qualitative analyses find some overlapping elite attitudes and behaviors. While not always appearing at the same hearings, black and Latino groups state similar positions when both testify (p. 68). They consistently support the same side in Supreme Court cases (p. 71) and state similar positions in briefs (pp. 85, 88, 90, 92, 93). NAACP and NHLA preferences match across the 9.6% of votes appearing on both groups’ scorecards (pp. 106–7). Over 56% of the analyzed roll call votes that the NAACP and NHLA rated from 1997 through 2004 evidence cooperation; 42% show independence (p. 143). Advocacy group, CBC, and CHC policy remarks also evidence an “absence of conflict and some cooperation” (p. 212).
Nonetheless, national elites do not neglect group-specific interests. Amicus briefs present “clear … cooperative activity” in a case not mainly about race (p. 85), but reveal black and Latino groups privileging different considerations—en route to similar positions—in two cases more directly about race (pp. 84, 93). From jointly analyzing NAACP and NHLA ratings and NOMINATE scores, Hero and Preuhs conclude that “ideology is the major basis for support of other groups” but “plays a lesser role regarding … representatives’ own racial/ethnic group’s policy positions; those are significantly animated by within-group considerations” (p. 149), a finding also echoed in other evidence (pp. 76, 96, 111).
The book does not establish that independence or even shared policy positions causally benefit either group or alter government outputs. While roll call results more often match black and Latino elites’ preferences when the NAACP and NHLA exhibit congruence, congruence may coincide with “wider … support for [the winning] position by various other groups” (p. 110). Yet independence’s importance is clear when considering issues—such as immigration (pp. 111, 144, 212)—where the politics of black–Latino elite conflict would surely impact the policy process, were it found.
The book also makes a contribution by broaching anew three questions relevant to not only minority politics but other American politics subfields, comparative politics, and public administration. One, as noted, is the conditions under which group interests trump shared ideology. A second is the role of ideology versus party in nurturing coalitions, particularly in a polarized Congress (pp. 145, 227). A third concerns the relationship between descriptive and substantive representation; there are three subquestions here: i) Do minorities offer representation different from whites of similar ideology (p. 158)? ii) Do minority legislators act as “trustees for minority interests broadly” (p. 116)? iii) Do minority representatives of one group nonetheless offer representation different from minority representatives of similar ideology from a different group (p. 160)? The last question, as Hero and Preuhs note, echoes one that Jane Mansbridge asked in 1999 (“Should Blacks Represent Blacks and Women Represent Women? A Contingent ‘Yes,’” Journal of Politics 61 [no. 3]: 628–57). Chapters 5 and 6 suggest that the answer to each subquestion is yes. Refer especially to pages 121, 159, and 162 regarding (i), 145 regarding (ii), and 173 and 180 regarding (iii). These indications that elites from different groups generate noninterchangeable representation underscore the continued need for research on racial and ethnic diversity, in public and private organizations, as a dependent and explanatory variable.
The book leaves two questions relatively open for future research. One is the degree to which elite nonconflict is owed to time, alongside federalism. While Hero and Preuhs find steady nonconflict starting as early as the 1970s, they note instances of conflict varying (pp. 143, 146) or declining (p. 182) over time, patterns that may merit further study. The other question is how black–Latino elite relations impact or intersect other inter- and intraminority dynamics. The book discusses aspects of intragroup heterogeneity (pp. 49, 102, 206–12) and relations with smaller ethnic groups (pp. 9–11, 200–201). Yet especially regarding the 2000 Census (pp. 88–90) and Claire Kim’s work (p. 183) (“The Racial Triangulation of Asian Americans,” Politics and Society 27 [no. 1, 1999]: 105–38), it would be interesting to read the authors’ thoughts on what black–Latino elite nonconflict implies for smaller ethnic groups, multiracial identification, and postethnicity (e.g., David A. Hollinger, Postethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism, 2006). These are, however, issues outside the book’s intended scope. Black–Latino Relations estimably unpacks a complicated question from numerous angles while avoiding detours into queries that are rightly separate projects.
Hero and Preuhs thus shed new light on black–Latino relations in American politics. Elite nonconflict and independence are notable for what they render absent from the policy process—intergroup conflict—and for what they are not—coalition politics. Demonstrating that “where we look … has implications for what we find” (p. 6), the authors distill an enormous amount of original material into systematic data, yielding a text transparent in its organization and instructive in both content and research design. Black–Latino Relations will surely catalyze further scholarship on the questions it studies and suggests.
