Tea Party Wave Stripped Southern Black Legislators Of Power

[tea and oranges]

Because of increasingly racially polarized voting patterns in the South, party has become a stand-in for race. As University of California at Irvine law professor Rick Hasen recently wrote in the Harvard Law Review, "The realignment of the parties in the South following the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s has created a reality in which today most African American voters are Democrats and most white conservative voters are Republicans." That means that, as Democrats have lost ground in statehouses in Alabama and elsewhere across the South, so have African Americans. According to research by David Bositis, in 1994, 99.5 percent of black state legislators in the South served in the majority. By 2010, the percentage had fallen to 50.5. Today, it's a mere 4.8 percent.]



"Party has become a stand-in for race" but whatever you do, don't call the Teahadists racist. . .

[link:http://crooksandliars.com/2014/08/tea-party-wave-stripped-southern-black|