The nature of American politics 33the same way the complex interrelationship between Catholic doctrine and
the need to assert their Americanness led the Irish Catholics of New York to
give overwhelming support to McCarthy.
At the lower levels of the political system ethnic divisions play a crucial
role. The politics of New York City or Los Angeles present the extreme pic-
ture of ethnic diversity and its effects. In New York City in 2000, the total
population was more than 8 million; over a quarter of the population were
of Hispanic or Latino origin and a quarter were black or African-American,
although there is some overlapping of these categories. Nearly 10 per cent
were of Asian origin. In 2005 Michael R. Bloomberg, a liberal Republican,
was re-elected as Mayor of New York, winning the support of 50 per cent of
black voters and a third of the Latino voters. In the City of Los Angeles in
2000, 46.5 per cent of the population of nearly 4 million were of Hispanic or
Latino origin, 10 per cent were of Asian origin and 11.2 per cent were black.
57.8 per cent of Angelinos reported that a language other than English was
spoken in the home.
This complex of ethnic and class divisions not only has implications for
local or city elections, but also may be a decisive factor in congressional
politics, or even in the complicated processes by which the president of the
United States is chosen. It is possible that differing attitudes towards such
concepts as ‘the public interest’ may be affected by ethnic origins, although
it is very difficult to demonstrate direct relationships between particular eth-
nic groups and specific attitudes towards governmental structure or policy.
James Wilson and Edward Banfield have suggested that ‘Anglo-Saxon’ and
Jewish voters in certain Ohio communities were more favourably disposed to
increasing public expenditure than were Polish or Czech voters enjoying the
same level of income. Some of the ethnic divisions within American society
cut very deep, as is evidenced by the position of blacks, yet one might expect
that, as groups of ‘hyphenated Americans’ become assimilated both cultur-
ally and economically, they would become indistinguishable in their political
behaviour from the rest of the population. This ‘assimilation theory’ may well
be correct in the long run, but it is important to remember that great waves of
European immigrants were still flowing into the United States until well into
the first half of the twentieth century, and the second half was characterised
by a massive influx of Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Vietnamese, Koreans and
other Asians. It is one of the most frequently observed facts of political life
that political loyalties tend to outlive the factors that created them. Local
conditions and local leadership can give a quite remarkable persistence and
coherence to ethnic political behaviour.
America has always been ethnically diverse, and as we have seen, in the
last half of the nineteenth century and in the twentieth century, immigrants
flooded into the United States on an unprecedented scale. But, although the
origins of Americans were to be traced to countries all over the world, Ameri-
can culture was amazingly uniform. English was the language used in schools
and public institutions. Immigrants were under pressure to learn English,