Deracialization And Urban Racial Contexts

Abstract

Building on previous literature of deracialization and white voting behavior, the author empirically tests whether the effectiveness of deracialization, measured by white crossover vote, may be conditional, dependent on urban racial contexts. The author examined 81 black candidates’ white votes in New Orleans biracial elections between 1977 and 1998. The results of ordinary least squares multiple regressions show that the differences in white crossover voting in New Orleans during the past two decades were related to black candidates’ strength. The relatively larger effect of newspaper endorsement on white crossover voting, compared to that of black incumbency, confirms previous findings regarding the powerful influence of news media on biracial elections in general and the deracialization strategy in particular. The most important finding of this research, however, is that the deracialization strategy was most effective when white voters were no longer the majority in the urban elections.