^{by Tom Head, About.com Guide to Civil Liberties}

Photo: Scott Olson / Getty Images.

In recent weeks, there has been a great deal of talk surrounding the supposed "brown-black divide" in the Clinton-Obama race for the Democratic nomination--the theory that Latino voters are biased against black candidates. There are several problems with this strange bit of political conventional wisdom.

The first is that many Latinos are, in fact, black--about 5 percent of Latinos identify as black, and about 25 percent have some black ancestry. While racism against darker-skinned Latinos by lighter-skinned Latinos does exist, Latino identity is ethnic, not racial. So when we're talking about a "brown-black divide" between African Americans and Latinos, we are in some instances talking about a black-black divide.

The second is that it isn't an accurate description of how Latinos actually vote. As Time's Gregory Rodriguez argues ("The Black-Brown Divide"):

Nationwide, no fewer than eight black House members--including New York's Charles Rangel and Texas' Al Green--represent districts that are more than 25% Latino and must therefore depend heavily on Latino votes. And there are other examples. University of Washington political scientist Matt Barreto has begun compiling a list of black big-city mayors who have received large-scale Latino support over the past several decades. In 1983, Harold Washington pulled 80% of the Latino vote in Chicago. David Dinkins won 73% in New York City's mayoral race in 1989. And Denver's Wellington Webb garnered more than 70% in 1991, as did Ron Kirk in Dallas in 1995 and again in 1997 and '99. If he had gone back further, Barreto could have added longtime Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley, who won a majority of Latino votes in all four of his re-election campaigns between 1977 and 1989.

Rodriguez argues that the real reason Obama is not doing as well as Clinton among Latino voters is because he hasn't established the level of institutional support in the Latino community that Clinton presently enjoys--due, one might imagine, to her longer history as a national figure. Clinton did exceptionally well, and Obama somewhat badly, among Latinos in Nevada on January 19th. Whether this trend continues on February 5th or not is a debatable point, but there is no evidence to indicate that Latinos as a group predictably vote in a racist way.

See also:

• Racism and Electability