Black Votes Matter in Ferguson

http://www.thenation.com/article/black-votes-matter-in-ferguson/

In the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests, two black candidates were elected to the Ferguson City Council in April 2015, but African-Americans still have very little political power in the area.

For example, nearly 80 percent of the 12,000 students in the Ferguson-Florissant School District are black, but the seven-member school board includes only two African-American members. In 2013, the district’s first African-American superintendent was forced out by the board.

There are many reasons for black political underrepresentation in Ferguson: a long history of discrimination, segregation, poverty, economic disinvestment, low voter turnout and police harassment, as detailed by the Department of Justice.

The structure of Ferguson’s political institutions also contributes to the scarcity of black elected officials. The school board elects candidates on a district-wide basis, rather than from specific district—known as “at-large elections”—and because the district’s voting age population is 50 percent white and 47 black, with whites usually refusing to vote for a black candidate, the white majority is virtually assured of determining the winner.