Pramila Jayapal, who we interviewed for this week’s piece on why more women don’t run for elected office—and why they should—pointed me to an article on why it’s also extremely important to encourage people of color to run for office.
For the purpose of our piece, we tightened the focus to address barriers for female candidates, but Jayapal had plenty to say on why minority candidates or potential candidates can be marginalized in similar ways. From political science research blog the Monkey Cage, a post on two recent experiments aimed at quantifying the unique role that people of color who hold elected office play in representing and advancing the interests of constituents of color:
These results suggest that measures like “minority influence” districting that do not ensure the election of minorities to office may not be enough to ensure minorities’ equal political voice. First, minorities in government appear significantly more likely to work to advance minorities’ interests in the many settings where political decision-making is not on prominent public display. Moreover, even if legislators did make every effort to represent their constituents even-handedly, the distorted communication they receive from their constituents may still lead them to provide unequal representation to those not of their race.
The post detailing the two experiments, by Berkeley poli sci PhD student David Broockman, is right here.