The Root; Published By: Wayne Washington
The outcry over the expulsions of a pair of Black Tennessee state lawmakers underscores a problem that often gets little notice – the already massive under-representation of Black Americans in the halls of state government.
The majority of Black Americans – some 56 percent, according to figures from the Pew Research Center – live in the South. Most Black Americans have ancestral ties to the region, and despite its blood-soaked history of racism and racial violence, it’s where many Black folks have chosen to remain.
But it’s also where Black Americans have far less political clout than they should given their numbers in the region’s population.
Black people are not represented in states we live In:
Black Americans are under-represented in every one of the 13 states that made up the Confederacy. And in many states with the highest percentages of Black residents, the gap between those percentages and the percentage of Blacks in the state Legislature is the largest. Read more
