My research was designed to look at how systematic issues can lead to minorities feeling discouraged from engaging in political processes. I was motivated to ask this question Because this is something that is very real in my life and I have witnessed the effects of discouraged minority voters my entire life.
My first figure is a graph that shows political efficacy by race from 1960-2016. You can see peeks in the levels of efficacy for Black populations around the mid to late 1960s as well as what seems to be around 2012. The spike in efficacy for Black individuals could coincide with the voting rights act of 1965 and in 2012 the re-election of President Obama.
My next figure presents the results of a logit regression esimating the effect of an individual’s race on their likelihood of reporting that they feel political efficacy. These results show that once you control for level of education and income, that being black is associated with a greatert likelihood of feeling political efficacy.