Overview for American Politics Unit 3C – Representative Processes in the USA: Racial and ethnic politics

Despite the election and re-election of the first African American executive, the USA has failed to produce a completely colour blind society, where there is socioeconomic and political equality. The tragic death over the past year, of Mike Brown in Ferguson, Eric Garner and finally, Freddie Gray illustrate the failure to disassociate ethnic minorities from aligning with crime. In both the Brown and Garner cases, neither white police officer was removed or indicted – Darren Wilson and Pantaleo went free and again, it was the minority communities who suffered the most. The death of Freddie Gray sparked great protests in Baltimore, concluding with the indicting of 6 police officers by a grand jury.

Despite an institutionally racist police force, it could be argued over the last year, history has been made through the prominence of the ethnic minority communities; in Congress, the federal bureaucracy and the restoration of foreign ties.

The midterm elections saw the election of Tim Scott a Republican in South Carolina, the first Black senator to serve in the Solid South since Reconstruction, a great landmark in the 21^st century. The election of Mia Love in Utah, the first Black woman Republican in Congress. These two cases express the ethnic representation being monumentally represented.

On the issue of immigration, racial and ethnic politics have ceased to be a bipartisan issue – with the executive order on immigration granting amnesty to the 11million undocumented immigrants.