November 6th, 2014
Galley Friend X submits the following question. I don’t know congressional politics in granular detail, but maybe there’s an obvious answer:
Honest question: Have white Democrats ever elected a black congressman? That is, has a black D ever been elected from an non-minority-majority district? I can’t think of any. But every black R is, essentially, elected by white people. (And we’re the racists!)
There’s probably an obvious answer to this–maybe a big-city district that isn’t quite minority-majority, but is maybe 35 percent African-American. But like I said, I don’t know off the top of my head.
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If we count states as districts, two black senators have been elected in blue states.
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Keith Ellison (DFL, MN) represents a mostly white district, less than 20% black per Wikipedia.
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NC-12 was originally drawn as a majority black district in 1992, which actually enabled Republican takeovers in 1994. A bunch of white Democrats sued and got the Supreme Court to rule against it, and it’s been white plurality ever since but only barely. (Something like 47% white, 45% black.) A decent percentage of the whites are noncitizen immigrants of some sort (whether Hispanics or simply college professors, whatever), so I think a majority of registered voters has always been black.
Fake Herzog November 6, 2014 at 8:35 pm
All Black Ds:
Texas 18 is only 40.4% Black, but it is 35.6% Hispanic (the rest is white and Asian). Represented by a crazy Black woman.
Texas 9 is even more diverse (near Houston): 37.5% Black, 32.8% Hispanic, and 10.7% Asian (with 32.9% white). Al Green (not the soul singer) represents the district.
Missouri 5 is about 63% white and 23.7% Black (I had to compile those figures myself based on county totals) and is represented by the Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus!
California 37 is 24.6% Black, 38.6% Hispanic and the rest is white and Asian (9.3% Asian). Represented by a proud Black woman!
Nevada 4 is only 14% Black (and 29.7% Hispanic, 35.9% white, and 14.8% other — what the heck is other?!) Represented by a black man until January 3, 2015.
Indiana 7 is 63% white, 29.4% Black, and 4.4% Hispanic. Represented by a black Muslim — only the second Muslim to be elected to Congress. Allahu Akbar!!!
That’s all for now.