Marion Orr, professor of public policy and political science and director of the Taubman Center for Public Policy and American Institutions, co-authored “Anxieties of an Ethnic Transition” in the Urban Affairs Review in October. The article deals with the tensions and increased anxieties regarding the election of Angel Taveras, who is the first Latino mayor of Providence. The paper uses a survey to show how ethnic differences coupled with the city’s economic downturn has increased the pessimistic outlook of some citizens on the future of the economy.
Herald: When did you begin this survey? Why?
Orr: Every year around August and September we devote one of our surveys to the city of Providence. We survey city-registered voters.
Has intra-minority competition worsened? Do you suspect it might be because of the Latino mayor or a combination of the economic times and race?
The city’s demographic population has shifted so dramatically in the last several decades that political leaders are trying to figure out what these demographic changes mean for city politics. When we talk about intra-racial tension, we mean that because of segregated neighborhoods and because Latinos and African Americans are increasingly sharing the same geographical space residentially, they bump up to each other in terms of political dynamics. Because our political institutions tend to correspond with neighborhoods, we begin to see this battle. Almost all the Latinos who are in the city council are holding city council seats that at one point used to be held by African Americans, and you see some tensions there.
Can you speak more about “strategic and psychological adjustments”?
There are a number of people who develop theories about how groups handle ethnic transition. The theoretical argument is that communities behave and react differently based on their inside or outside status. When we say strategically, for example, if you are white ethnic and your people have ruled the city for a long time and you look at the demographic numbers, you have to think about, “How are we as a group going to respond to a growing percentage of the electorate who are not Irish nor Italian who happen to be Latino and other minority groups?” The outgroup, the Irish and Italians, have to think strategically about how to align themselves to maintain their political power. Do you pull Latinos into your coalition or do you create tensions between Latinos and African Americans and make them fight among themselves? That’s a strategic decision that one could make.
Would you say the coalition between Latinos and liberal whites is an indication of broader political cooperation and similarities between both peoples or simply a product of self-interest?
Liberal whites here in Providence are largely in the East Side. If you look at Taveras’s election, it is clear that he did substantially well in the East Side. My hypothesis is that liberal whites see in Taveras a reform orientation, that he is not a part of the traditional political machine. They have longed for years to try to reform city government and they are hesitant to endorse and support candidates whom they think are going to return back to the days of mayors being indicted. For them, it is in their self-interest because they want to keep someone like Mayor Taveras in office because he is viewed as a (reformer), versus the candidates he ran against who were seen as the old boys kind of club. If you elect them you might take us back to the days of machine politics.
Could the “machine politics” that is pervasive in Rhode Island partly account for the increasing intra-minority competition?
When you look at the history of machine politics across our city, machines tend to be institutions that have blocked minority inclusion into local government — machines have never been one to simply open their doors to new groups. There’s a tendency, because of the limited pie that the city has, to try to keep groups from being a part of the machine. Machines have hampered, slowed and delayed the incorporation of minority groups into city politics.
Has political participation increased amongst blacks as a response to the increase in Latino political participation, given the intra-minority competition that exists?
I am not sure. I do know that there are discussions and concerns about what the rise of Latinos in city politics means for other minority groups. African Americans have been in city government for a long time, they were brought into the city council in the late 1960s. African Americans were brought into the system and have played a part of the machine for a number of years. My suspicion is that there is considerable concern among African American leaders of Providence about the withering away of their influence in city government. The question becomes how do you respond to that, and I’m not sure they know how to respond.
Did you find anything that you didn’t expect?
Yes, I’m sure I did but I cannot remember right now.
At the end of the day do you think the differences outweigh the similarities amongst minorities?
Any of the leaders in the Latino and African American communities understand mutual self-interest and the fact that their communities share similar concerns. At the elite level, I believe there is a clear willingness and recognition to work together. The question becomes how do you get that out to the masses of people and have that kind of relationship filtered down at the mass level. For example, at the elite level, things like housing foreclosure ordinance, racial profiling and efforts to reign in rogue cops who tend to pick on minorities demonstrate the notion of working together.
Can parallels be made between the attitudes of people in Rhode Island regarding the new mayor and the larger American attitude about the presidential election, as the switch of power also occurred in an economic downturn and both the mayor and president are ethnically different than their predecessors?
Angel Taveras’s election and the president’s were similarly anchored by strong support from liberal communities, in that sense there is some similarity. And then the other thing was the willingness of the broader public to size up the candidates and really try to discern which one will be best for the future and the kind of resume that they bring with them.
You mention that maybe the lack of experience in having a Latino mayor by voters might account for the increased anxiety. Do you think that if the economy worsens or improves voters will reflect this onto their opinions of the performance of the “Latino mayor”?
I think you are not going to be able to separate the mayor’s public approval from people’s everyday experiences, not only of the economy but also of the services that the city provides — that’s the main thing the people look for. Whether the mayor will be able to provide adequate services in a way that doesn’t hurt the city’s fiscal position. Part of it is the performance of government and questions of whether or not people have jobs. No incumbent mayor or president wants to see the economy go in the wrong direction.
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