CPA Interview:
Coalition Building Among People of Color

At CPA’s 2001 Summit on the States, Dr. Ron Walters and Professor Andy Hernandez spoke during a special workshop focusing on the challenges and opportunities inherent to forming coalitions among people of color. This meeting was so well-received that CPA decided to engage Walters and Hernandez in a follow-up interview. Walters is the Director of the African American Leadership Institute, and a professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland. He is internationally known for his expertise on the issues of African-American leadership and politics. The former President and CEO of the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project, Hernandez was in charge of Latino outreach at the Democratic National Committee during the Clinton Administration. He has written several books on Latino politics and is currently the Visiting Professor on Leadership at St. Mary’s University in San Antonio.

What are the consequences of political divisions between Latinos and African Americans?

RW: We both lose power. Division between Latinos and African Americans diminishes the opportunity to actually impact the political system in a way that puts forward our joint agenda. Aside from the particular issues Latinos face – language and immigration issues, we have a lot in common – especially with issues of racism and economic disparities.

AH: If Latinos and African Americans become competitive with each other around the scarce resources that are afforded minorities, even in today’s society, we’re going to minimize what power already exists. Politics is about putting forward your values, your vision, and then your interests – what you need to be able to advance in our society. All working class people have a vested interest in working together. So the consequences of division are not just bad for Latinos and African Americans, they are bad for the rest of the body politic.

What can communities of color organize together around?

RW: There are issues and values that communities of color share. Both Latinos and African Americans are subject to a lot of problems with poverty at the base. For example, looking at the TANF population – it is a majority of blacks and Hispanics. So you know both populations are experiencing problems with racism in employment, both experience discrimination in procuring loans and establishing credit, both are subject to the same problems of predatory lending and redlining. Where blacks and Hispanics share communities, they also share ghettoized housing conditions, and this results in underfunded schools and depressed neighborhoods.

AH: Overall, Latinos and blacks share the same economic marginalization in society. Forty percent of all Latinos, 60 percent of immigrants, and a larger share of African Americans say they have been discriminated against at some point. They share the same need to access society, because they’ve been excluded from decisionmaking, from power, and from economic opportunity. Due to this shared history of marginalization and subordination, their views of government are quite similar. For example, both believe that government should play a more active role in providing opportunities for minorities. If you compare surveys and polls from both groups, the answers are almost always the same. It translates into a lot of agreement in the electoral process. We vote for each other more often than not, we tend to think alike more often than not, and we tend to be on the same side of the issues more often than not.

"All working class people have a vested interest in working together."

What are some instructive examples of coalition building by people of color?

RW: In politics, one of the biggest is currently in Texas, the so-called "dream team" with a Hispanic, Tony Sanchez, at the top of the Democratic ticket for Governor, and Ron Kirk, an African American, as the candidate for U.S. Senate. That’s the kind of grand coalition effort that will be held up as a model of the kind of things we’re talking about on a political level.

AH: What’s interesting is that almost all Hispanics voted for the Hispanic candidate Victor Morales against Ron Kirk, but almost all of the Hispanic leadership endorsed Ron Kirk publicly and campaigned for him. It was a significant step for Hispanic leadership to have endorsed Kirk against their own guy. It’s difficult for a Hispanic leader to endorse a non-Hispanic, especially when you have a Hispanic running for U.S. Senate. It would be difficult for blacks to do as well.

RW: Coalitions by their nature are episodic, so it is tough to have coalitions that are longstanding. But there have been some great attempts in Southwest Texas, with the Voter Registration Education Coalition, to do joint programming with African Americans. Individuals have been key to this effort, like Jesse Jackson. He has routinely established a strong political base by bringing Hispanics into coalitions in a number of ways. Back in his 1984 campaign for president, he marched in Texas alongside migrant workers to highlight their lack of services. There are joint efforts between the Black and Hispanic Congressional caucuses to do things together that have significant outcomes for both populations. But, I haven’t yet seen anything in health or education that I could point to as a national model.

AH: One good example of coalition building is redistricting. All of the national civil rights groups – Asians, Latinos, blacks – started meeting 2 years ago to make sure we didn’t hurt each other in the redistricting process. And it worked! We’re not suing each other, although the districts are being drawn in the middle of our areas. That’s a successful coalition, and not easy to pull off. As far as issue campaigns go, in California, a majority of African Americans voted against the proposition to end bilingual education and against the proposition that would have denied undocumented workers access to state services. Although the Hispanic community tends to think of affirmative action as an issue exclusive to blacks, a majority in California voted against the proposition to end the practice.

What pragmatic approaches can a community and its leaders of color take to build a coalition?

RW: The steps in putting together a coalition, or not understanding how to build an effective one, those aren’t the problems. The problem is one of issue identification. If we can move outside a base of exclusive issues, then it’s natural to form coalitions and allies. Most groups have issues that stabilize them, but outside of those, they can bring everyone to the table and opportunities for organizing can take place. For many of us, the issues around civil rights have been some of the most important for building coalitions. Political issues have been secondary, yet there are plenty of localized struggles where groups work together – fighting for better schools, toward adequate child care, better transportation. The issues are out there, but unfortunately, localized fights and coalitions cannot be stretched nationally.

AH: The first task of African Americans and Latinos is to build up their political base. The stronger political base we have in both communities, the stronger coalitions we can create. I’ve never believed that the act of bringing people together gets you more power. The only thing that gets you more power is bringing together both powerful people and resources. Numbers alone don’t mean anything – you have to be mobilized and organized to translate them into political depth. There are four R’s of real, authentic coalition building: 1) Respec – teach group has to respect what the others bring to the table; 2) Reciprocity – it has to go both ways; 3) Resources – each group has to bring resources (votes, leaders, influence) to a common table; 4) Representation – everyone has to be at the table voting together from the outset. You have to have representation at the decisionmaking table, not at the envelope-stuffing table.

"The stronger political base we have in both communities, the stronger coalitions we can create."

Is it a bigger priority for people of color to organize reactively or proactively around an issue or campaign?

RW: It’s a bigger priority to organize proactively, yet these efforts tend to get blindsided by something and then a reactive approach is adopted. But the priority is always on proactive activity because it moves you toward the goalpost, while a reactive activity works to stabilize something – a gain, a right that was already won.

AH: To organize proactively you have to use a considerable number of resources that tend not to be available to our groups. The reason we’re always in a reactive mode is that we don’t have the long-term resources to be proactive. To be proactive when you don’t control the levers of power is a hard task.

When the 2000 census data came out, the media promoted the claim that Latinos had become the largest minority, and were going to take political power away from blacks. How can we dispel the "divide and conquer" message operating in the media and political circles?

RW: With regard to the census, the raw population doesn’t indicate voter turnout, because many people aren’t registered to vote. But the data does give us an idea of what could happen in the future as far as influence. The media seems to focus on the conflicts. While there is just as much or more attraction in working together than there is in working apart, you will rarely find anyone queried in news articles about the potential positive value in working together.

AH: We have to stop creating a subjective reality of our conflict, and start creating an objective reality of our collaboration. Part of the narrative has been given to us by the press and we feed into it. We have to change the narrative. There will be tensions. All of politics is competition, so you are going to have competition between Latinos and blacks. What we can’t allow to happen is natural competition and normal tension to be interpreted as chronic conflict.