18
very least, those who hold Congressional hearings are willing to ask both groups to testify at the
same frequency for these types of hearings.
[Table 7 Here]
To examine how the issue influences the propensity of each type of advocacy (non-
cooperation, and cooperation or conflict), Table 7 presents the percentage of cases within each
major topic over three mutually exclusive categories (black testimony, Latino testimony, or both
black and Latino testimony). Similar to the analysis of amicus curiae briefs, the impact of issue
type on bi-lateral or individual advocacy can be examined to determine how joint activity is
affected by interests or ideology. If ideology is shared across all groups, and thus they are
willing to cooperate on any particular issue based on this common ideology, then the distribution
of individual advocacy and inter-racial/ethnic group joint testimony should remain fairly
constant as one moves from one issue/topic to the next. As Table 7 reveals, this is hardly the
case. The rate of congruence in testimony is much higher in Civil Rights, Minority Rights and
Civil Liberties than the remaining categories. Government operations and Law, Crime and
Family Issues also seem to be topics where representatives from black and Latino groups tend to
testify at relative high rates. Other topics revealed a more clear distinction between black and
Latino groups. Health care issues tended to be the subject of black testimony to a greater extent
than overall percentages would suggest. This is the case for Macroeconomics; Law Crime and
Family; and Community Development and Domestic Commerce. Other issue areas followed this
path, but had too small of a sample from which to draw comfortable conclusions. Latino groups’
testimony tended to increase for hearings on Education and Labor, and Employment and
Immigration. Other categories had such few cases where either a black or Latino group testified
that even preliminary conclusions are ill-advised. What can be said is that there is a good deal of
Convention