I’m too tired to be blogging this point now, but I’m too worked up not to. A little while ago I heard DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe say to Chris Matthews on “Hardball” that the Texas Republicans’ redistricting plan was designed to “disenfranchise the minorities of Texas.” (Tonight’s transcript isn’t available yet, but when it is it’ll be here.)
About a week ago I wrote at some length about the double-standards that are rampant in debates over re-districting, and if you don’t recall (or, worse, never read) that post let me urge you to go read it now. What follows assumes your’re familiar with Supreme Court’s holding in Hunt v. Cromartie, discussed there, that packing blacks into a district in sufficient numbers to elect a Democrat was legitimate because partisan, as opposed to racial motive is O.K. Where, as here, said the Court (with Sandra having switched sides to make a 5 vote majority), race correlates so closely with partisanship the complaining party must show that race itself, not partisanship, was not only a motive but the “predominant” motive. Further, anyone objecting
must show at the least that the legislature could have achieved its legitimate political objectives in alternative ways that are comparably consistent with traditional districting principles. That party must also show that those districting alternatives would have brought about significantly greater racial balance.
The Democrats applauded that decision, but in Texas they’ve conveniently forgotten it. What’s worse, the mainstream press seems to have forgotten it as well.
An article in today’s Washington Post, despite the inclusion of several quotes from Republicans that provide the appearance but not the reality of balance, could have been written by the DNC.
Start with the head and sub-head:
Stalking Democrats, GOP Hits Minorities
Tex. Plans Affect Black, Hispanic Voters.
This is rather like implying that the weather is unfair because rain falls on blacks and Hispanics. Of course it does, but it falls on everyone else as well, just as redistricting affects all voters.
Based on results from the 2000 and 2002 elections, Texas appears to be somewhere from 55% – 60% Republican. The Democrats prevented the legislature from redistricting after the 2000 election, handing the issue over to the courts. The current plan gives the Republicans 47% (15) and the Democrats 53% (17) of the representatives in Congress, and the Democrats are claiming that bringing the Congressional representation more in line with the state’s current partisan make-up is unfair because it will deprive minorities of their right to elect representatives of their choice.
You may think I exaggerate, but take a look at a few of the items in today’s WaPo article:
But in slicing and dicing the map for partisan advantage, the GOP is also, and perhaps inevitably, playing a delicate game of racial gerrymandering that has prompted sharp protests from minority groups and will almost certainly be subject to concerted legal challenges under the Voting Rights Act.
Of course, in Hunt v. Cromartie the court specifically said racial gerrymandering was not racial gerrymandering when its predominant purpose was partisan. Shouldn’t the WaPo article have dealt with this distinction a bit better? Read the article and see what you think.
“I won’t use the word racism,” said [Rep. Chet] Edwards [a Democratic incumbent who may lose his seat], 51, a fiscal hawk and Harvard MBA who has won reelection mainly with the help of minority voters and Republican ticket-splitters. “But I’ll say this: They have pursued redistricting on both a partisan and racial basis. The real victims are historic communities of interest, rural areas and minority voters.”
No, the real victims would be white Democratic incumbents like Edwards. (No black or Hispanic incumbents are targeted.)
Central to the problem is that partisanship and race are so closely entwined in Texas, as they are in other southern states. Mindful of that, the GOP redistricting plans under consideration aim to defeat some white Democratic incumbents mainly by breaking up geographic clumps of their most reliable voters — African Americans and Hispanics — and dispersing them into heavily white, middle-class and Republican districts.
That practice — known as “cracking” voting communities — is a tried and true method of redistricting for partisan advantage. Democrats themselves did it to Republicans in the past. But the move was less racially tinged, analysts said, because it involved redrawing communities with primarily white voters.
What “analysts”? Could they possibly have been Democratic analysts? Why is what is usually regarded as racial gerrymandering only “racially tinged” when Democrats do it but racist when Republicans do the same thing?
The proposed redistricting in Texas is a mirror image of what was approved in the North Carolina redistricting case, which goes unmentioned in the article. There, blacks were crammed into a district to elect a Democrat; here they are dispersed to elect a Republican. The former is kosher; the later is racist (Edwards may not say it, but everyone else does).
“[Democrats] say they’re concerned about minority representatives but what they’re really concerned about is Democratic representation,” said David Beckwith, spokesman for the Republican lieutenant governor, David Dewhurst.
But Democrats say the real point is not just the number of blacks and Hispanics elected to Congress. It is also that the GOP plans would replace liberal and moderate white Democratic congressmen who are highly rated by the NAACP and other minority groups with conservative white Republicans rated poorly by the same groups. That would strip as many as a million minority Texans of an effective voice in Congress, they insist.
Let me get this straight. The real objection is that “liberal and moderate white Democratic congressmen who are highly rated by the NAACP and other minority groups” will be replaced with “conservative white Republicans rated poorly by the same groups’? The NAACP, in short, has a constitutional right to representatives it likes? Only liberals and moderates can provide “an effective voice”? How convenient for them.
“It’s a laugh to say [the Republicans] are not doing away with minority representation,” said Lester Gibson, an African American county commissioner whose heavily black, working-class precinct near Waco could find itself merged with middle- and upper-middle class, largely white Republican areas such as Round Rock, home of Dell Computers. “The way they’re going, there’s no way they’re going to accomplish their goal without hurting African Americans and Hispanic Americans.”
But, according to Hunt v. Cromartie, if there’s no way to achieve partisan redistricting without “hurting” minorities, that’s perfectly legitimate so long as hurting the minorities is not the “predominant” motive.
Pregnant Irony
The Democratic argument regarding redistricting is simply another version of the liberal argument regarding racial preference: where race is concerned, traditional principles of colorblind equality must be set aside in order to ensure an acceptable proportion (whatever that is) of racial representation.
Lurking in these redistricting double standards, however, is a little-noticed irony, an irony ripe with constitutional implications. As I discussed most recently here, many liberals have become vociferous critics of various aspects of our federal system such as the electoral college and a U.S. Senate that represents states and not people. They regard it as unfair that sparsely populated states have the same clout in the Senate as large states, and a disproportionate amount of clout in the electoral college. At times many such critics voice a preference for an un-federal one person/one vote democracy. They often tend to regard states as little more than inefficient anachronistic artifacts from an earlier era, and they certainly think they have no legitimate interests that an un-representative Constiution should protect.
Under the new racialism that is now predominant in liberal circles, however, race provides the very sort of “community of interest” that states were once thought to represent. That minorities are, well, a minority is all the more reason to give them an assured and guaranteed voice and presence. In fact, all sorts of new communities would probably be guaranteed inclusion. Wyoming would no longer deserve two senators, but wiccans might.
In short, I strongly suspect that if a Constitutional Convention were held today, liberals might well argue for the retention of a structure that would be vaguely reminiscent of our current federalism, but their society would be “constituted” of races and ethnicities, not states or regions. Thus they would probably devise electoral structures that would guarantee a threshhold of racial and ethnic representation, and they would surely insist that the new constitution include no language suggesting that individuals have a right to be judged without regard to race, creed, or national origin. Quite the opposite.
“but their society would be “constituted” of races and ethnicities, not states or regions”
Brilliant! And, original.