Black Faces in the mirror: African Americans and Their Representation in the U.S. Congress

Extract

Black Faces in the mirror: African Americans and Their Representation in the U.S. Congress. By Katherine Tate. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003. 224p. $37.50 cloth, $18.95 paper.

This is an exceedingly useful study in helping to clarify some of the conflicting findings of researchers addressing the viability of the political representation of African Americans, in this case, within the U.S. House of Representatives. Katherine Tate begins to clarify, at the outset, the frequently used categories of “descriptive” and “substantive” representation by including Hanna Pitkin's “symbolic” representation, or descriptive representation devoid of substance, as the major conceptual focus of discussion.