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Chapter 2 Race and Representation in State Legislatures In many ways, New Jersey Assemblywoman Bonnie Watson Coleman typifies the twenty-first-century black state legislator. A graduate of Thomas Edison State College, an Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority sister, practicing Baptist, lifetime member of Trenton’s chapter of the NAACP, and loyal Democrat, Watson Coleman is a civic leader with deep community roots. In 1994, after a long career in government service that included a stint as director of the State Transportation Department’s Office of Civil Rights, Contract Compliance and Affirmative Action, the Trenton native moved into the private sector to form a human resource development company along with her father, the late John S. Watson. But Watson Coleman is an atypical black legislator in other ways. Her father was not just a business partner, but a role model who served in the New Jersey Assembly from 1982 to 1994, which makes her a political legacy. And the district Watson Coleman represents—which stretches from the less affluent communities in Trenton to the tony suburbs of Princeton—is unusual for a black state legislator not only because of its majority-white population, but because it is a two-member district whose other legislator, Democrat Reed Gusciora, is a white male. She and Gusciora share a campaign office and staff and run as a slate. Watson Coleman is especially proud of the relationship she maintains with her district’s residents, remarking that, as an African American and a woman, her constituency service takes on special meaning. “I guess there’s a natural inclination on the part of constituents to reach out to me,” she says,“because I’m active in my community, I’m active in the churches, they hear me on the radio, and when they have a problem they seek me out.”1 Not long ago, the number of self-made, African American businesswomen -turned-state legislators could be counted on one hand. In fact, as 39 recently as the late 1970s, there were simply too few black state legislators of either gender in the United States to compile any meaningful statistics. Today, nearly 600 black state legislators represent 43 American states, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.2 Except in states where their numbers are small, they are organized into racial legislative caucuses or, in a few states like New Jersey, multiracial caucuses.3 Most black state legislators represent predominantly African American communities, but majority-white districts like the one Assemblywoman Watson Coleman represents continue to elect a growing number of such legislators. But the story of representation cannot be understood simply through the increased numbers of black state legislators or special cases like that of Bonnie Watson Coleman. For the changes of recent decades to have meaning, being present must mean having a greater presence. The distinction is more than semantic. Indeed, the rising number of black elected officials has generated a healthy, ongoing debate among not only political scientists, but also among scholars of race and representation more broadly. In the first half of this chapter we briefly review this debate, with specific attention to the theoretical and practical significance of the descriptive and substantive representation of African American interests. In the second half, we ask a simple question with complex implications: Who are these contemporary black state legislators? We look at their age, gender, occupations, educational backgrounds, partisanship, and even their relations by blood and marriage to one another. We also examine the demographics of the constituents in their districts. RACE AND THE MEANING OF REPRESENTATION In his famous treatise on democracy, A Preface to Democratic Theory, Robert Dahl (1956:1) asserted that there was no singular democratic theory, “only democratic theories.” Dahl proceeded to propose a seemingly paradoxical theory of polyarchy—the rule of multiple minority groups whose numbers, size, enfranchisement, and diversity are required to influence the makeup of policymakers and the direction of policy decisions. Representation of group interests, and the explicit political activity necessary to ensure group representation, is, therefore, central to meaningful democracy. Yet defining and understanding the implications of representation on legislative behavior, electoral politics, and constituent-policymaker relationships has remained ever elusive for scholars interested in democratic politics. In Hanna Pitkin’s influential work, The Concept of Representation (1967:8–9), with its four divergent dimensions of representation (i.e., formal, descriptive, symbolic, and substantive), the elusiveness of defining representation is characterized thus: “Representation, taken generally, means the 40 Race and Representation in State...

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