End of an Era: Material changes in the American electorate 1968-2008

• In Event: The More Things Change…: Economic Disparity, Power, and the Changing Electoral Landscape in the African American Community

Abstract

Over the past 40 years, 1968-2008, American political theatre has illustrated a persistent effort to maintain a fractured American electorate characterized by long-held cultural cleavages. Those cultural cleavages have been used to drive a wedge between communities producing an incoherent public. A confluence of demographic changes, market relations, and the power of words have contributed to the material conditions that brought an end to an era and the emergence of an increasingly coherent public.

Author

• Marcus Jerome Coleman, University of Georgia