Transforming Politics, Transforming America: The Political and Civic Incorporation of Immigrants in the United States

Mobilizing Group Consciousness: When Does Ethnicity Have Political Consequences?

Mobilizing Group Consciousness When Does Ethnicity Have Political Consequences? Jane Junn On any weekend between early spring and late fall in New York City, a celebration of identity marching on Fifth or Madison Avenues can be witnessed. “Kiss Me I’m Irish” buttons mark the beginning of the season of the mass display of group identification at the most venerable of parades on St. Patrick’s Day. Italians, another of the earlier immigrant groups to New York, hold two large public celebrations, the Columbus Day parade and a stationary festival in Little Italy at the Feast of St. Anthony. Newer immigrant groups have followed suit with their own commemorations, including Puerto Rican Day—the largest of the Latino celebrations with tens of thousands of marchers and spectators—the Cuban Day parade, the Dominican Day parade, and the Celebration of Caribbean Culture. Asian immigrant groups publicly mark their ethnic identities with the Chinese New Year celebration in lower Manhattan, Philippine Independence Day Parade and Festival, Korean Day, Pakistani American Independence Day, and the India Day parade among them. There is no pan-Asian parade, and while a Hispanic Day parade was held several years ago, pan-Latino celebrations have occurred only sporadically since then. While New York City is unique in many ways, similar organized displays of national, ethnic, and racial identity are enacted in communities across the United States. The group compositions and labels may vary, but the imperative of publicly claiming and celebrating identities remains the same. New patterns of international migration to the United States, overwhelmingly from sending countries in Latin America and Asia, foreshadow the development of a democratic politics organized around a new racial pluralism. Political theorists have taken up anew the question of how “identity politics” will influence the conduct of contemporary government.1 The expectation that a demographic shift toward diversity will have Mobilizing Group Consciousness 33 political consequences has multiple origins. Perhaps most compelling is the intuitive appeal of the notion that people with shared ethnic and/or racial backgrounds will naturally join together. Public celebrations of ethnic identity and the successful collective action strategies of African Americans during the civil rights movement are but two examples of the palpable link between collective identity and group mobilization. Equally compelling is a normative premise linking citizen participation with political equality; more voice, particularly among those traditionally disadvantaged, will lead to more-favorable political outcomes that enhance equality (Verba 2003; Verba, Schlozman , and Brady 1995). With a critical mass of racial minorities emerging post-1965 comes the possibility that disadvantaged groups might mobilize into ethnic and multiracial forms that increase their input in democratic politics. Foregrounded thus, it seems reasonable to hope and expect that a shared sense of racial and/or ethnic identity will have political consequences and predict, among other things, higher levels of political participation among those who are so identified. But does it? Research in sociology and political science examining African American political behavior during the 1960s and 1970s offers strong evidence of the significance of black consciousness for political activity (see Verba and Nie 1972, Olsen 1970, Danigelis 1978, Shingles 1981, Miller et al. 1981). In one of the earliest and most in- fluential empirical studies of Black consciousness, Sidney Verba and Norman Nie (1972) found racial identification to be so powerful as to overcome significant deficits in socioeconomic resources; the effects potent enough to unseat formal education, the mightiest of all explanatory variables for political activity. Subsequent studies found the notion of “linked fate” among African Americans to also contribute to political participation (see, e.g., Tate 1993, Dawson 1994, 2001), though others note that the link between group consciousness and increased activity among is not consistently replicated either among African Americans today or members of other racial and/or ethnic groups (Chong and Rogers 2002). There is only sporadic evidence that Latinos and Asians have racial /ethnic identities with political kick (see, e.g., Beltran 2003; Lien 2001, 1994; Leighley and Vedlitz 1999; Jones-Correa and Leal 1996; Uhlaner, Cain, and Kiewiet 1989). Nevertheless, there are numerous examples of successful mobilizations of group consciousness to achieve political ends. Just because researchers fail to find it—particularly when looking in data from the large sample survey—does not necessarily mean the phenomenon does not exist. In addition to African 34 Jane Junn Americans, organized groups of women, gays, Latinos, and...