RACE, ETHNICITY AND POLITICAL RESOURCES - PARTICIPATION IN THE UNITED-STATES

This article uses data from the Citizen Participation Study - a large- scale survey of the voluntary activity of the American public designed to oversample African-Americans and Latinos as well as political acti vists - to inquire about the extent and sources of differences in leve ls of political activity among African-Americans, Latinos and Anglo-Wh ites. Considering a variety of political acts, we find that, in the ag gregate, African-Americans are slightly, and Latinos are substantially , less active than Anglo-Whites. However, the resources that facilitat e participation - some of which, for example, education, are related t o social class and others of which, for example, religious preference and activity are associated with race or ethnicity - are distributed v ery unevenly across the three groups, with Latinos at a particular dis advantage. After accounting for differences in politically relevant re sources, there is no significant difference among the three groups in political participation.