Civic Narratives: Political Exclusion, Agency, and Civic Participation Among Black Residents in San Francisco

Scholars of civic and political participation have been puzzled by questions of disengagement among socially, economically, and politically marginalized groups. Drawing on 32 in-depth interviews with long-time Black residents of San Francisco’s historic Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood, this analysis examines the factors that influence the civic participation choices of residents. By employing conceptual tools from previous studies of civic participation, this article demonstrates how local opportunities and constraints influence civic attitudes and behaviors. The narratives offered by residents in this study reveal that civic participation is not a fixed practice but instead a dynamic process of adapting political attitudes and behaviors to evolving environmental conditions. These findings present a micro-level account of the effects of political exclusion and disadvantage on civic engagement practices and hold important implications for our approaches to broadly mobilizing perceivably disengaged populaces.