New York: The Great Anomaly

Rufus Browning, Dale Marshall, and David Tabb present some straightforward and convincing theses in their admirable workProtest Is Not Enough. Urban policy responsiveness to minority interests, they argue, depends not so much on the direct impact of protest as on the advent of a dominant liberal coalition in which blacks and Hispanics have some role. Where such coalitions have not succeeded, racial exclusion and policy resistance tend to hold sway. Where blacks or Hispanics have played a leading role in bringing such a coalition to power, or in Browning, Marshall and Tabb's terms where political incorporation has been greatest, then policy results favor minority interests. Political incorporation depends on protest and electoral mobilization among blacks and Hispanics combined with favorable white attitudes toward minority interests. The size of the minority community and its leadership capacity in turn explain minority political mobilization.By these propositions, New York City should be characterized by substantial black and Hispanic political incorporation and the resulting targeting of policy outputs on minority interests. In the 1980 Census, New York's population was 23.9% black and 19.9% Hispanic; these numbers may have been substantially undercounted. In any case, two-thirds of a decade later New York is clearly a majority minority city. Black political participation dates from Adam Clayton Powell and Benjamin Davis' election to the city council in 1941 and 1943. The first Puerto Rican assemblyman was elected on the Republican and American Labor Party lines in 1938. Subsequently, both groups have had a long and sophisticated history of political participation. From the 1960s onward, a new generation of leadership led both groups to assert their political demands more strongly. The Lindsay administration afforded a national model of how a new liberal coalition could experiment with new forms of political incorporation. Voting in state and national elections would suggest the city is on the liberal end of the urban political spectrum. In short, by Western lights New York should be a model of strong minority incorporation and the consequent targeting of city policies toward minority interests. The problem, however, is that New York City has not incorporated minorities and, depending on what indicators are chosen, has not produced policies that are especially aimed toward minorities.