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Examining the Pro-White Bias in the Senate
White America is overwhelmingly overrepresented in the Senate making it America’s most structurally racist institution
New York Magazine’s Jonathan Chait explains how, in addition to a multitude of other systems, the Senate is structured to favor and represent the needs of White America over all others. It’s simple math: residents of small, inherently Whiter states have proportionally more representation and fewer minority voters. This math creates a pro-White bias in the Senate that the status quo is far from eager to change despite all of our recent conversations around equality.
Evidence of this desire to hold tight to the pro-White bias can be seen in the response to Barack Obama’s recent call for reform that was treated as radical and described as “norm shattering.” The idea that a fairer, reformed Senate would be disruptive to democracy warrants questioning what the current system has to lose.
“The Senate is affirmative action for white people. If we had to design political institutions from scratch, nobody — not even Republicans — would be able to defend a system that massively overrepresented whites,” Chait writes. “And yet, while we are yanking old 30 Rock episodes and holding White Fragility struggle sessions in boardrooms, a massive source of institutionalized racial bias is sitting in plain sight.”
