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Minority Politics in St. Louis |
Issues
Segregation
St. Louis is the ninth most segregated of the fifty largest metropolitan areas in the United States, according to the 2000 census. The segregation is even more pronounced in the city itself, which is why many of the locals refer to St. Louis as the "Birmingham of the Midwest."
Segregation is most prevalent in St. Louis' Central Corridor--a string of five neighborhoods that separated the city's predominantly white South side from its North side where the majority of minorities reside. In the city of St. Louis the average white person lives in a neighborhood that is 88 percent white, 1.5 percent Hispanic, 8 percent black, and 1.8 percent Asian. The average African American lives in a neighborhood that is 65 percent black. This disparity increases drastically in the Central Corridor where there are extreme cases of neighborhoods that are 99 percent white and neighborhoods where 99 percent of the residents are minorities.
In addition to residential segregation, the inhabitants of St. Louis also succumb to social segregation. By living separately, whites and minorities are behind most U.S. cities in embracing diversity, and this often leads to a proscription that certain social activities are either white or non-white. It would be rare to find an African-American attending a hockey game, for instance, and most bars and restaurants have a majority of either white or minority clientele.
Many residents feel that this social segregation has contributed significantly to an increase in brain drain from the city. The perception is that young people want to live in cities with a mix of cultures and ethnicities, and that St. Louis' inability to accept diversity is driving many talented young people away from the city.
Racial Profiling
The American Civil Liberties Union defines racial profiling as occurring, "when the police target someone for investigation on the basis of that person's race, national origin, or ethnicity. Examples of profiling are the use of race to determine which drivers to stop for minor traffic violations 'driving while black' and the use of race to determine which motorists or pedestrians to search for contraband."
Racial profiling is a minority issue across the United States, and cities like St. Louis, where racial tensions are high, are most susceptible to this trend. Due to the nature of the activity, statistics on racial profiling are difficult to assess--reports do not always show an officer's motivation to investigate. What can be determined, however, are specific incidents of racial profiling that draw attention because they result in the fatal shooting of a suspect. During the decade that ended in December 31, St. Louis police officers fatally shot twenty-four minorities, and have all ready killed four minorities in the year 2000.
These shootings have lead to the threat of rioting among minority populations on several occasions. One specific example occurred in February 2001 when African-Americans protested after a white officer shot and killed a black woman in her home during a drug raid. The officer states that he though she had been carrying a gun or a knife, but it was later determined that she was holding a foot-long carriage bolt.
Because the presence of racial profiling is difficult to verify, it is likely that racial profiling will remain a minority issue in St. Louis for a long time.
Minority Contracts
In 1989, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the case of City of Richmond v. J.A. Croson Co., that U.S. cities could only hold quotas for issuing government contracts to minority firms in order to remedy the effects of past discrimination. When St. Louis began to build a convention center in 1990, black contractors alleged that they had been denied equal opportunity to work on such projects. Following this debate the city announced that it would give preference to minority firms by offering them twenty-five percent of government contracts, which equal about $70 million a year. Government contracts are still a hot debate among minority firms, however, as new issues have risen to the surface.
One issue is that the government is not hiring the number of minority firms it had promised in 1990. According to the latest St. Louis study conducted by Management of America Inc. of Tallahassee, FA, the city only hired minority firms for eight percent of its contracts. This number doesn't even come close to the city's goal of twenty-five percent.
A second issue regarding minority contracts is whether the government is not taking all the necessary steps to ensure that firms the city hires as part of the twenty-five percent are indeed minority owned and operated. Since 1990, many firms have put on "fronts" that they are controlled by minorities when they are really run by white males. In October 2001, the head of the city's program was fired for taking too long in approving minority contracts. Minorities his dismissal was unfair because the time he took was necessary in order to prove that contracts were issued to firms that were truly run by minorities.
Redistricting
Congress introduced the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in order to protect minorities' rights in electing local legislatures. One provision of this Act outlawed at-large elections under the notion that minorities would never be able to get representation if the entire population of a city voted for all the legislative officials. The Voting Rights Act, instead, mandated the use of legislative districts. Each legislative district must correspond to a certain section of a city, and citizens of each district elect one member to the legislature. Also, under the Act, each city must create districts with a majority of minority voters if minorities make up a certain percentage of the population.
The Voting Rights Act certainly applies to St. Louis where minorities make up 51 percent of the city's population. The representation of minorities in St. Louis' Board of Alderman, however, is slightly disproportionate to the city's minority population. Currently, whites hold 55 percent of these seats while minorities only hold 45 percent.
With the city's plans for redistricting in November 2001, due to an overall drop in population in the city's North side, much attention has been focused on this issue. The city has proposed to move two of its districts from the minority based North side to the southeast where more whites live. Minorities have protested that this redistricting violates the Voting Rights Act because, if the proposition passes, minorities are likely to lose two of their seats in the Board of Alderman, making minority representation even more disproportionate to the percentage of minorities in the overall population.
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This site was created for Dr. Rodd Freitag's Pols 350 Group and Minority Politics course at the University of Wisconsin--Eau Claire.