In the wake of the 2016 Presidential election, a lot of voices here and elsewhere have called for the Democratic Party to refocus on the concerns of white working class voters. But a new campaign called Democracy in Color says that is exactly the wrong approach to take at this time. In their view, the concerns of white voters are already over-represented in the party. It is a situation that the leader of this group describes as a “near-apartheid state of the Democratic Party.” For example:
Roughly 46 percent of Democratic voters are people of color. Yet with the exception of Rep. Ben Ray Luján, the New Mexico Democrat who leads the party campaign arm for House candidates, nearly every top leader of the party-related institutions and outside groups that controlled $1.5 billion in political spending this cycle is white.
There is a crying need for party leadership among people of color that have the cultural literacy to drive higher turnout among black and brown voters. Democracy in Color is urging Democratic campaign organizations to hire people of color to be Executive Directors who in turn can knowledgably staff up these groups with people who possess this cultural literacy.
In business terms, this is a growth opportunity — the growth opportunity — for the party. Every day, 7,000 people of color are added to the population, compared with 1,000 whites. A majority of eligible voters in Texas will be people of color in two years. In 2022, the same will happen in Arizona. Spending an inordinate amount of time chasing white votes is fighting the last war.
Democracy in Color recommends fewer campaign resources devoted to old-school TV commercials and more toward grassroots organizing and outreach to communities of color. They also wisely recommend a true autopsy of the 2016 campaign that the Democratic Party glossed over in its losses in 2014. Such an examination, they suggest will reveal that “there is clearly a majority for Democrats to attract without having to resort to Trump-like tactics of coddling the racial resentment of some white voters.”