Minority Political Incorporation in San Diego

Résumé du document

As San Diego's first Latino mayor, succeeding a White Republican, the key issue of your mandate will be the political incorporation of minorities that mobilized to elect you. Your election is a beginning: minority groups legitimately expect a change in city politics: they want a true commitment to their interests through the end of racial discrimination and the sharing of the benefits of government. To govern efficiently, you shall coordinate this expectation with the demands of the other groups. A multiracial coalition mobilized to elect you because it considered that representation and incorporation of minorities into government would result in responsive and beneficial policies. How did this happen? What is required for minority political incorporation? According to Browning et al., there are two steps to incorporate minorities: mobilization through protest activity, and mobilization through electoral effort.

Extraits

[...] In this regard, it must be acknowledged that the weak level of citizenship among Latinos is lessening their electoral weight: politically incorporate this minority necessitates increasing citizenship and voter registration. But each group also has its characteristics, and encouraging intra-ethnic coalitions is as important as promoting inter-ethnic coalitions. African- American, because they have been fighting for their political and civil rights for a long time, are often well organized, and have long secured a Liberal White support within biracial or multiracial coalitions. [...]

[...] Moreover, we must make sure that we take into account the interest of the whole minority group, not only of its upper class; this is another argument for tying relations not only with the elites of each group, but also with the CDCs. Third, it is important for us to maintain the intra-ethnic solidarity of our Latino core supporters, because they are our most important electoral basis. In order to keep being supported by this community, we must give them representation and political power, as shown before. [...]

[...] By being closed churches and associations, as exemplified by Pinderhughes in Chicago. Because Latinos are widely Catholic, being close to Catholic churches and helping their development is a key way to maintain the intra-ethnic solidarity without challenging electorate's broader interests. Indeed, it is important both to maintain strong intra-ethnic and inter- ethnic alliances in order to have a wide support and an important leverage in the promotion of minority interests, but we must also content the city's whole electorate. If we fail in one of these goals, our rainbow coalition will be disappointed and will eventually explode, and the broad electorate will be willing to return to a “normal situation”, with a White mayor. [...]

[...] found various minority political incorporation patterns in their study, and the ideal one is a biracial electoral coalition where minorities govern with Whites in a liberal coalition. Therefore, if we want to be successful, we must not be guided by self-interest. There are three concentric circles on which we must concentrate our efforts, without creating conflicts between them: the whole urban electorate, our rainbow coalition and our minority group. First, we need to put on the agenda issues of broad interest, like economic growth, in order to content the whole electorate. [...]

[...] Because the role of urban politics is to fulfill the needs of citizens, we should focus on providing minority groups with: Decent housing, by building low-income housing in the poor neighborhoods of San Diego, like Tom Bradley did in the Black neighborhood of Los Angeles; Services, that are often lacking: health care, fire protection, police protection; Accessible facilities, which promote a community life, such as parks and libraries. c. the issue of multiracial coalitions: how to hold a “rainbow” coalition together ? Because these policies might favor some minority groups and disappoint other, a key issue for the mayor is to hold the coalition together and strong. For instance, it is the proliferation of conflicts within Bradley's coalition that led to its demise. [...]