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News Page 8 Street Roots • March 18-24, Courting color Steve Phillips, author of “Brown is The New White,” says candidates need totia better attention to the rainbow coalition that is the new American majority BY JOANNE ZUHL STAFF WRITER f today’s political scene has left you feeling less than hopeful, consider the work of Steve Phillips. Phillips is a civil rights lawyer and senior fellow at the Center for American Progress who has analyzed the body electorate and Steve Phillips: The definition of its, major population growth among people progressive is admittedly elusive. I felt the of color. His book, “Brown is the New 'best data set are the exit polls. So I use the White: How.the Demographic Revolution 2012 exit polls as data - both because it Has Created a New American Majority,” was after the “hope and change” lays out the progressive power in the enthusiasm had worn off, but also because numbers: Combined, progressive people of the president had a record: universal color and whites make up 51 percent of all health care, immigration reform, equal pay eligible voters today. for women. People voted for his record, so Candidates should take note. he had gone on the record and those were That’s the underlying message behind the elements. That’s why I define Phillip’s best-selling book - that despite progressive on lines of universal health some of the dominant rhetoric of this care, immigration reform, equal pay for year’s presidential cycle, progressives hold women, marriage equality - that was an the cards. agenda that he was clear about and people Phillips was looking forward to casting voted to for four more years of that. So his first vote for president when he began that gives us the data set, so who wanted following Jesse Jackson’s 1984 presidential four more years of that is 81 percent of campaign. He was only 20, and he voters of color and 39 percent of white describes the experience as transformative voters. And when you apply those - melding his personal interest in the civil percentages to the entire eligible voter rights movement and Martin Luther King population in the country, that’s 51 percent Jr. with its tangible legacy in the electoral of the country. sphere. He felt a part of the continuum That is the urgency of this book at this moving forward, witnessing real change time. Which direction are we going to go? taking shape. And to fuse a sense of urgency into the It was that experience that helped him Democrats that this structural advantage see the potential of Barack Obama’s 2008 can be very fleeting if they don’t invest presidential bid. He co-founded heavily in it . . . . PowerPAC+, which became the largest I BROWN lw 11« STEVE PHILLIPS independent voter mobilizer backing Obama and other candidates. Phillips spoke to Street Roots about the book prior to his engagement with the Color PAC Action Fund in Portland. We started by clarifying, for the purpose of his new book, what he defines as progressive. Joanne Zuhl: Fleeting in that the progressives are not going to be progressives any longer? S.P.: Because the conservatives and the Republicans do see this math, and they have a dual strategy - suppression and seduction. The suppression continues at pace - undermining the Voter Rights Act, creating voter ID laws - and the seduction continues. They’re running a rainbow coalition slate for president. And a lot of their top elected officials - Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, Marco Rubio - this rainbow tableau that on its face can be appealing. J.Z.: You talk about the changes in laws, movements and population since 1965. What’s the diverging course that has, even today, the white population directing the course of politics? S.P.: Actually, in 2012, the African- American turnout was higher than the white turnout That was the first year that had happened. The black turnout has continued to increase over the past decade. The Latino and Asian population voting is a different issue. It’s tied into those ’65 realities, but there is a shorter history in this country. Seventy-four percent of Asian- American adults are .foreign born, because it was illegal for Asians to come to this country. And so there’s not the same tradition in history in that sense. And then the biggest challenge is around Latinos, See COLOR, page 9
