Black incumbents, white districts - An appraisal of the 1996 congressionalelections

This article explores the controversial 1996 success of three African Ameri can incumbents (Sanford Bishop and Cynthia McKinney of Georgia and Corrine Brown of Florida) who lost their majority-Black southern congressional dist ricts to Supreme Court decisions. Using aggregate electoral data and Gary K ing's solution to the ecological inference problem, we gauge (a) the extent of bias against Black candidates, (b) the extent of backlash against Black voters, and (c) the extent to which incumbency explains away the Georgia v ictories. The findings are compatible with neither a full attack on racial redistricting nor a defense of it. Southern Whites do not exhibit either co nsistent bias against Black candidates or backlash against Black voters, bu t racial polarization is nonetheless evident and dispersed in a geographica lly systematic manner. Barriers against Black representation are still stro ng, but they are not the electoral barriers that civil rights activists ass ume when they embrace majority-minority districts.