by Alex Meneses Miyashita
Elected officials of color, regardless of their race or ethnicity, tend to share similar views on a number of national policy 8issues, including immigration, the war in Iraq, the Voting Rights Act and No Child Left Behind.
The majority of them are supportive of the Voting Rights Act and policies 6that benefit immigrants. On the other hand, the large majority is against the Iraq war and in favor of returning the troops as soon as possible. Support for NCLB stands at about a third.
The conclusions were drawn from a survey of 1,354 responses from elected officials of color conducted by the Gender and Multicultural Leadership Project and released Nov. 8 in Washington, D.C.
The survey compares the views of male and female Latino, black, Asian and Native American officials, primarily at the state and local level, on policy issues, making it a first of-its-kind study, according to its investigators.
It also offers a demographic view of the composition of these office holders nationwide.
“Our intention was to look at the emerging leadership of color in public office as elected officials,” Christine Sierra, political science professor at the University of New Mexico, told Weekly Report.
She emphasized the growing role of women in politics. “Women of color often get left out of the story. They are a very important force of this new emerging leadership.
Sierra pointed out that while there are more Latinos holding public office than Latinas, the latter group is growing at a faster rate.
Findings included:
IMMIGRATION: Most elected officials of color favored offering government services to residents in languages other English, 78 percent, and providing public school instruction in other languages for limited-English proficient students, 68 percent.
Less than half supported providing driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants, 41 percent, and allowing legal non-citizen immigrants with children in public school to vote in school board elections, 47 percent.
IRAQ WAR: Black officials were most likely to oppose the war In Iraq, 90 percent, followed by Asians 75 percent, Native Americans, 70 percent and Hispanics 69 percent.
Slightly more than a third, including 35 percent of blacks, Asians and Native Americans, and 34 percent of Hispanics, oppose it “strongly.”
Blacks are also most likely to favor a rapid withdrawal of the troops, 93 percent, followed by Native Americans 87 percent, Hispanics 80 percent, and Asians 76 percent.
VOTING RIGHTS ACT: Latinos and Native Americans were slightly more likely to favor bilingual ballots, 83, than blacks and Asians, 78. On the overall importance of the VRA’s reauthorization, 96 of Native Americans, 95 percent of blacks, 63 of 7Latinos and 74 percent of Asians supported it.
NCLB: Support for No Child Lefi Behind was below 50 percent. Asians expressed the most support at 37, followed by Latinos and blacks 34, and Native Americans 29.
Differences were more evident along gender lines. Latinas were more likely to oppose it than Latinos, 61 vs 49. Black women 56, black men 47. Asian women 67, Asian men 57. Native American women 40, Native American males 71.
POLITICALAFFILIATION: More than threequanters of the officials, 76, identified themselves as Democrats, 10 as Independents and 6 Republicans.
However, most of them, 34 also Identified themselves as being “middle of the road,’’ 32 as liberal and 29 as conservative.
The survey included the responses of 722 black, 509 Hispanic, 96 Asian and 27 Native American elected officials.
Sierra, who collaborated on the multi-year project with three other political science professors, all women, white, black and Asian, said they will continue to release more findings from the extensive data they have collected.
For more information, visit www.gmic.org.
Hispanic Link.
