Black Substantive Representation and its elusiveness under “Winner-Take-All”

Black Americans have long fought for equal representation in American democracy. This fight has included the abolitionist movement, which brought about the 15th Amendment; and among its notable achievements, the civil rights movement brought about the Voting Rights Act of 1965. An important goal of both of these achievements, as those who fought for them understood it, was Black political representation in the democratic process. This inherently involved the ability of Black Americans to not only vote, but also to hold office and effect policy outcomes – encompassing, both descriptive representation – such as where a representative shares their racial identity; and substantive representation – where their policy priorities are reflected in government decisions.¹

In the post-civil rights era, as Bayard Rustin put it, Black Americans went from “protest to politics,” entering a new age of the civil rights struggle in which political power would be sought through electoral politics.² Central to this shift was a demand for Black representation – both descriptive and substantive. Over the years, descriptive representation has undoubtedly increased for Black Americans: the 119th U.S. Congress (2025-2026) has 67 total Black members of Congress compared to 5 when Rustin wrote “From Protest to Politics,” the three most populated cities in America all have Black mayors, we have had a Black American President and Vice President, and many other notable advancements in Black descriptive representation – Black descriptive representation has increased at all levels of government.

Despite these advances in descriptive representation, substantive representation has proven to be largely elusive for a myriad of complex reasons. Many of these reasons can be attributed to our winner-take-all electoral system – where a single candidate and party win 100% of the representation in an electoral district, often with only a plurality of voter support. In this series we will explore the ways in which the winner-take-all system has impeded substantive representation; and ultimately, we will consider the role that proportional representation could play in achieving more substantive representation for Black Americans.³

But first, what is substantive representation for Black Americans? We have already established that substantive representation refers to having your policy goals reflected in government. Substantive representation therefore refers to the ability of representatives to respond to the policy interests of their constituents by achieving solutions through policy and any other political action that responds to the needs of their constituents.⁴ Substantive representation can look different for everyone, and this includes within group contexts – no group is monolithic. For Black Americans, however, substantive representation has historically been seen through the lens of what is good for the overall group.

Scholars have traditionally conceptualized this propensity as ‘linked fate’, referring to the individuals within the group perceiving their fate as being tied to the fate of the social group.⁵ Linked fate is what scholars have used to explain the collective approach or group-identity-based politics consistently observed in Black American political behavior.⁶ That is why for Black Americans, we do have an idea of what substantive representation is: policies that are responsive to the collective demands of the Black electorate. This includes the menu of policies various subgroups of Black Americans have consistently demanded, and that have group-wide support: reparations, criminal justice reform, gun violence and community safety, voting rights, addressing disparities in education, healthcare, and housing, to name a few.

The Black Census Project launched in 2018, was the largest survey of Black Americans’ political opinions and policy preferences conducted in over a century. From its survey of over 30,000 Black Americans, it found these items, among others, to be particularly salient to the community en masse, and has aptly referred to them as the “Black Agenda”.⁷ Policy outcomes championed by representatives who are responsive to these substantive items would perhaps lead to feelings of greater satisfaction for Black Americans who feel that government is not responsive to their substantive interests.⁸

Under winner-take-all systems, substantive changes to the status quo are extremely difficult to achieve. As Lani Guinier has argued,

“...black electoral success theory simply reconfigures winner-take-all electoral opportunities into geographically based, majority-black, single-member districts. Representing a geographically and socially isolated constituency in a racially polarized environment, blacks elected from single-member districts have little control over policy choices made by their white counterparts. Thus, although it ensures more representatives, district-based black electoral success may not necessarily result in more responsive government.”⁹

This is why some have argued that Black descriptive representation has often amounted to tokenism – mere descriptive presence, with little to no substantive impact. And this also applies in contexts where they are elected by majority-white constituencies, with or without Black support.¹⁰ Thus, under the winner-take-all system, accurately representing the interests of racial and ethnic minority voters like Black Americans has been an elusive goal. This has had the effect of making Black Americans not only more skeptical and cynical of Black descriptive representation, but also American democracy more broadly.¹¹ And yet, Black Americans still desire more descriptive representation.¹²

Perhaps this is because many Black Americans, like Guinier, recognize that the Black descriptive representation achieved under winner-take-all systems thus far has faced many obstacles to substantive representation. So, perhaps we need to explore more permissive electoral systems – referring to an electoral system’s permissiveness (or lack thereof) of smaller groups of voters (racial and ethnic minorities), a minority voting community, to elect their preferred candidates – to improve descriptive representation and its effectiveness in achieving substantive representation.

According to scholars of electoral systems, more permissive systems such as proportional representation (PR) can do better than winner-take-all systems at accurately representing the interests of racial and ethnic minority voters.¹³ If PR systems show the potential to help improve Black descriptive and substantive representation and address some of the substantive items we have mentioned, perhaps many Black Americans would welcome the idea of shifting to PR. Under winner-take-all, the substantive representation most Black American voters desire is elusive; but could PR be different? We will take that question up later in the series, but first we shift our attention to the winner-take-all system and why it doesn’t deliver for the Black electorate.

1. Dovi, Suzanne. "Political representation." (2006).

2. Rustin, Bayard. From protest to politics: The future of the civil rights movement. League for Industrial Democracy, 1965.

3. Proportional representation is defined as “an electoral system that elects multiple representatives in each district in proportion to the number of people who vote for them.” See https://protectdemocracy.org/work/proportional-representation-explained/

4. Pitkin, Hanna F. The concept of representation. Univ of California Press, 1967.

5. This concept was initially developed by Michael Dawson in Black Visions. See Dawson, Michael. "Black Visions: The Roots of Contemporary African-American Political Ideologies." U of Chicago P (2001).

6. Gay, Claudine, Jennifer Hochschild, and Ariel White. "Americans' Belief in Linked Fate: Does the Measure Capture the Concept?." Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics 1, no. 1 (2016): 117-144.

7. See https://black2thefuture.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/BlackAgenda2020.pdf for the “Black Agenda” and https://blackfutureslab.org/black-census-project-2/ for more about the survey. It has received scholarly attention, for example at the National Conference of Black Political Scientists in 2019 – see Navarro-Rivera, Juhem. "Panel Proposal: The Black Census Project." In 2019 National Conference of Black Political Scientists (NCOBPS) Annual Meeting. 2018.

8. Ibid.

9. Guinier, Lani. "The triumph of tokenism: The Voting Rights Act and the theory of Black electoral success." Michigan Law Review 89, no. 5 (1991): 1077-1154. P. 1080. Also, see p. 1078-1079, where Guinier says of Black electoral success theory, “In black electoral success theory, empowerment is obtained through meaningful enfranchisement, which exists where blacks are elected. The theory thus promotes the election of individual black representatives as spokesmodels for political equality. Simply by virtue of election opportunities, black electoral success advances civil rights enforcement, government intervention on behalf of the poor, and black "role-model" development.”

10. Ibid. p. 1108.

11. See the Black Census 2023 report for more on this https://blackfutureslab.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/BCP-ExecutiveSummary0806.pdf

12. Tate, Katherine. "The political representation of blacks in Congress: Does race matter?." Legis. Stud. Q. 26 (2001): 623.

13. Guinier, Lani. "The representation of minority interests: The question of single-member districts." Cardozo L. Rev. 14 (1992): 1135; Brockington, David, Todd Donovan, Shaun Bowler, and Robert Brischetto. "Minority representation under cumulative and limited voting." The Journal of politics 60, no. 4 (1998): 1108-1125.