Black electoral politics has undergone a profound transformation in the half century since African Americans statutorily secured equal voting rights with whites. Once confined to a small number of exceptional cases, the population of black elected officials has multiplied dramatically. The genre which studies African American politics has, likewise, vigorously proliferated, but theoretical deficiencies persist. In particular, the dominant model used to explain the choice of racial campaign strategies by African American candidates in jurisdictions where most of their voters are white is incomplete. The model's underlying hypothesis is premised on limited and increasingly outdated assumptions. Commentators continue to argue that successful black candidates must discard their racial identity in order to win white votes, yet a careful examination of the actual practices of black politicians in majority-white jurisdictions demonstrates that this argument is not substantiated empirically. As a result, scholars are mischaracterising the potential for black candidates to win elections in majority-white contexts. This thesis is an attempt to advance the scholarship through a theoretical reconceptualisation of racial campaign strategies underpinned by original, empirical research. The thesis sets out to achieve two goals. The first goal is to provide a rich, analytical account based on primary research of the range of campaign strategies available to office-seeking African American candidates outside of majority-black election contexts. The thesis demonstrates the capacity for black candidates to embrace their racial identity and champion policies which redress racial inequality while still seeking support from white voters. The second objective is to offer plausible explanations as to the strategic decision-making process in these campaigns. The thesis highlights the shifting importance of three sets variables which candidates face when choosing their racial campaign strategies: racial context and history, the racial attitudes of supportive and opposing elite actors, and candidates' own racial biographies.

Since the Civil Rights era, African Americans have come a long way. In the years since the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, there have been dramatic increases in education, political representation, business ownership, and occupational position. Yet, for all of the economic, social and political advances made in the African American community, many young people are still subjected to inferior schools, housing and depressed communities where crime, drugs, police brutality and HIV/AIDS run rampant. As a result, there is a growing tension among the community over the root causes of their predicament and the most adequate way of dealing with them. Based on the generational political theory, this dissertation examines generational effects within the African American community since 1964. From this period, three distinct cohorts are analyzed: the Civil Rights, Integration, and Hip Hop generations. The objective is to determine if different experiences over this period have modified political values, attitudes, and behaviors from one generation to the next. Using data from the 1996 National Black Elections Study (NBES), I examine public policy preferences and political attitudes of African Americans. I use bivariate and multivariate analysis to show generational gaps in attitudes about issues related to major party performance. I draw three major conclusions from this analysis. First, racial group interests remain powerfully important across all cohorts. Next, the Hip Hop generation tends to hold more conservative attitudes than either the Civil Rights or the Integration generations. Finally, I conclude that at the very core of black politics, political values have not changed. However, there is a tension among the Hip Hop cohort between the impending attitudinal changes and the more traditional values of the Civil Rights cohort. The proposed dissertation contributes to the body of research by analyzing generational politics and behavior to better understand the future of black politics in the 21st century.

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