Download e-book for iPad: Black Faces in the Mirror: African Americans and Their by Katherine Tate

Here, Katherine Tate examines the importance of race within the U.S. approach of consultant democracy for African americans. featuring very important new findings, she deals the 1st empirical research to take in the query of illustration from either side of the constituent-representative relationship.

the 1st half the e-book examines no matter if black participants of the U.S. apartment legislate and characterize their components in a different way than white contributors do. illustration is greatly conceptualized to incorporate not just legislators' roll name vote casting habit and invoice sponsorship, but additionally the symbolic acts during which they have interaction. the second one part appears on the factor of illustration from the viewpoint of standard African americans according to a landmark nationwide survey.

Tate's findings are combined. yet, normally, legislators' race does form how they symbolize their elements and the way ingredients assessment them. African american citizens view black representatives extra absolutely than they do white representatives, even those that belong to their very own political celebration. Black legislators, even though, are only as most likely as white representatives to sponsor and achieve passage of accounts in the home. Tate additionally concludes that black apartment participants are extra liberal as a gaggle than are their black materials, yet that there's enormous divergence within the caliber and sort of illustration they provide.

The findings said right here will generate controversy within the fields of politics, legislation, and race, fairly as debate commences over renewing the vote casting Rights Act, that is set to run out in 2007.