Diversity in Democracy: Minority Representation in the United States and Freedom Is Not Enough: Black Voters, Black Candidates, and American Presidential Politics

• Published in: Perspectives on Politics 2006, Vol.4 (2), p.398-401
• Main Author: Gay, Claudine
• Format: Review
• Language: English
• Subjects: BOOK REVIEWS: AMERICAN POLITICS
• ISSN: 1537-5927; 1541-0986
• DOI: 10.1017/S1537592706500271

Diversity in Democracy: Minority Representation in the United States. Edited by Gary M. Segura and Shaun Bowler. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2005. 316p. $45.00. Freedom Is Not Enough: Black Voters, Black Candidates, and American Presidential Politics. By Ronald W. Walters. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005. 239p. $27.95. Diversity in Democracy is an ambitious book—even more ambitious than its subtitle suggests. Together with an impressive team of contributors, Gary Segura and Shaun Bowler set out to examine how minority Americans—blacks and Latinos, in particular—engage with the democratic political process, from how they align themselves within the existing party system to how they use the tools of democratic citizenship (namely, the vote) to advance their interests. In many ways Segura, Bowler, and their colleagues succeed and, in the process, reveal a number of important empirical phenomena and relationships, such as the value of descriptive representation in promoting both political trust and participation. Because of its contribution to basic knowledge about minority political behavior, this book would certainly be a valuable addition to any minority politics syllabus. However, its ambition is both a source of strength and a weakness.