There have been many reports on how California's changing demographics and shifting the states political landscape. That is true but how much and how quickly may depend on whether California's nonwhite population becomes more engaged in politics. A second study on race in population from UC Riverside finds that disparities in political participation between whites and people of color that already exists maybe extending into the next generation. Joining me is the study's co-author Professor Karthick Ramakrishnan, associate dean, UC Riverside School of Public Policy. We spoke last summer when your first report came out. You thought racial disparities in political participation existed in the recent past. What makes this study different quick A couple of things. What we did was to look over a ten-year period ending in 2014. We had a limited set of measures. We were using federal survey data from the U.S. Census Bureau and we looked at kinds of activities like attendance at public meetings in contacting officials but that data was not frequently collected. We did not have anything more recent. It also did not have data on detailed agent troops and we know there is differences across Asian groups on a host of measures. Importantly it did not have measures like political attitudes like whether people are interested in politics are not and it did not have information on whether people are being contacted by political parties and campaigns. We were able to do all of this. We filled out a survey in the fall of 2016 and we were able to answer these questions in a more comprehensive way with more recent data in more detail data. The idea that whites have the most power and influence in California Baltics remains. What does that mean?. Even though California is diverse the majority minority since 2000. That means that no racial group is a majority but was in that if you look at California today, Latinos and Asian Americans together are the majority of California residents. The other majority of the adult population but they are nowhere close to the majority when it comes to people who contacted officials to express their preferences, people who are donating money to politics, people who are engaged in boycott activities like other activities it was all recently. Coming tease of colors and Latinos and Asian Americans are unrepresentative in all of these efforts. What are some of the reasons for that? Pick back dust So people who have less education attainment or lower incomes generally are less likely to participate.'s lack of resources into being important. It is not just that. What we find what we control for those factors is we still see big gaps in other major reasons in California is there ever get origin. So lack of proficiency ends up making a difference and then finally quite importantly whether or not someone gets contacted ends up playing a huge role. So what that means is even for example someone who is Asian American who may be higher income, higher educated, may speaking this very well. They're still not being contacted by political parties and campaigns. That makes them less likely to come out of participate in activities that we are talked about. There were not the same exact racial disparities for every political activity. Protesting and attending public meetings with some exceptions. Tell us about that. The racial gap that we found is that is Spanik and whites are the less likely to participate in Latinos depending on the activity tend to be the least likely to participate. Protesting and attending to public meetings we find that Latinos have relatively high rates of participation in these activities and across racial groups the differences are not statistically significant. There are reasons why we think it's different for those activities. What are those reasons?. This is different from what we saw in our previous report. That is because we asked the question not just in the abstract in terms of attending public meetings but we specifically referenced city councils and school board meetings. We know from other studies that Latinos are very heavily involved in school politics in school board and school governance, education is a very important issue when it comes to how they get engaged into lesser extent but still significant. So that is probably why we are seeing a different pattern now then generally that question is on his. It comes to protest activity generally speaking some people refer to that as weapons of the week so people who tend to have less institutionalize power tend to rely on protests as a way to get attention and to get local institutions especially at the local level to pay attention and respond. Using 70% of newly eligible voters will be people of color. They will probably not have the language barriers their parents had but you say this racial disparity in political participation could continue. Why is that question mark. When you look at the nativeborn population many refer to them as second generation immigrants. They don't have the same kind of language barriers. What we find in our survey is that many of them still end up growing up in households where politics is not discussed as frequently. As for other Californians and we find that the problem of lack of mobilization is still very prominent. So even though these Latinos and Asian Americans are born in the U.S. don't have language barriers you're still not being contacted by political parties and campaigns. What were the potential effects of this racial imbalance in California's political participation continues? Something I really like about the way that we find this report is that is not just a standard concern about certain groups being powerless. We have many groups throughout the state that care about empowerment of disadvantaged populations, but even if someone doesn't care as much about that and all they cared about was good governance in California making sure that they are passing policies that are well thought out and are considering different perspectives from that perspective it is so vital to make sure that the people who are participating truly reflect the kind of constituencies that elected officials represent. If you don't have perspectives from different neighborhoods, from different group, gender diversity, you're less likely to consider in past policies that are comprehensive in the planning. It also matters for legitimacy. If the majority of California now is largely shut out of the decision-making process, it makes government decisions perceived as less legitimate in the eyes of constituents. That is selling the seats for long-term trouble. I've been speaking with Karthick Ramakrishnan, associate dean, UC Riverside School of Public Policy . Thank you very much.
White Californians are more likely to sign petitions or contact public officials compared to Asian Americans and Latinos, according to a new report from UC Riverside showing significant racial disparities in political participation.
The report builds on a similar study last year based on government data that included voting rates. The report was based on a telephone survey conducted in 2016 that asked Californians whether they protested, donated money to campaigns or attended public meetings, among other types of political engagement.
Whites were twice as likely to contact public officials, compared to Asian Americans and Latinos, for example. Co-author Karthick Ramakrishnan, associate dean of UC Riverside’s School of Public Policy, said one key obstacle for those groups was language barriers. But in younger generations, with higher English proficiency, there is still a disparity in political participation.
“Mobilization still plays an important role,” he said. “Asian Americans and Latinos are much less likely to be contacted by political parties and campaigns. That makes a difference.”
The disparities were not universal, however. There wasn’t a significant racial difference in protest rates and Latinos attended public meetings at about the same rate as whites.
“Those activities tend to requires fewer resources,” Ramakrishnan said. “Making campaign contributions requires a lot. They also require fewer skills than being able to write a letter, for example. Those who are higher-educated are more likely to have the skills and self confidence to contact their representatives. It’s largely a class story.”
Ramakrishnan joins KPBS Midday Edition on Thursday with more on his findings and how local governments can reduce this disparity.
