The Impact of State Political Culture on Black American Civic and Political Participation

Background: Civic and political participation allow citizens to influence government decisions. However, Black Americans continue to exhibit less civic and political engagement than Whites. Black experiences in the U.S. are assumed to be homogenous due to the shared experience with racism. Therefore, the Black civic and political behavior literature often ignores the growing diversity of and regional distinctions in Black behavior; less is known about how state political culture relates to their political participation. This results in uniformed approaches intended to promote Black civic and political engagement. To further understanding in this critical area, we examined how states’ political culture influence Black Americans’ civic and political participation.

Methods: The 2016 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey includes a large, national sample of Black Americans and contains data allowing for comparative examination of civic and political behavior across all 50 U.S. states. The sample included 1,311 individuals identifying as Black or African American.

The dependent variables in this study are civic participation and traditional and non-traditional political participation. Civic participation is operationalized as working to solve a local community problem and attending a meeting about community issues. Traditional political participation is operationalized as participation in voting, campaigning, political donation, and contacting representatives. Non-traditional political participation is operationalized as participation in protesting, boycotting, and signing a petition. The indicators are combined to reflect whether a respondent engaged in each of these three types of activities (1 = yes and 0 = no). The independent variable state political culture includes Elazar’s (1966) subcultures: moralistic, individualistic, and traditionalistic. The moralistic culture utilizes the government to promote the public good. The individualistic culture prioritizes the private marketplace and personal gain. The traditionalistic culture uses the government to maintain existing social and economic hierarchies.

Results: Using binary logistic regression modeling, we found that Black Americans residing in traditionalistic states are less likely to engage in non-traditional political activities than those residing in moralistic (β = -0.576, p = 0.002) and individualistic states (β = -0.658, p = 0.000). This is surprising given that all U.S. Southern states are traditionalistic and where many non-traditional political activities were employed during the Civil Rights Movement. There were no significant differences found in Black American civic and traditional political participation among states.

Conclusions: Non-traditional political activities are catalysts for change; they raise awareness, generate dialogue, and amplify voices. However, some minimize the power of non-traditional activities and prioritize the protection of traditional political participation. The collective activism exhibited by individualistic and moralistic states’ residents may explain why these states produce more equitable policies and outcomes than traditionalistic states. The findings suggest that Southern residents may have abandoned their collective activism roots for more mainstream activities. Social and political action that promotes public participation and respects diversity is an ethical responsibility of social work. To produce a more equitable and inclusive political system, social workers should use a critical race lens when examining Black civic and political behavior.