The august Christian Science Monitor opposes gerrymandering intended to benefit a political party, but it supports racial gerrymandering. In this it is not unlike a number of other liberal publications.
An editorial yesterday, “Gerry-Meandering,” criticized the recent Supreme Court opinion (discussed here) that let stand politcal gerrymandering in Pennsylvania, saying that it is now up to voters rather than courts to insist on “voting districts that primarily reflect equality, contiguity, unity, and compactness – the key criteria for fairness in redistricting.”
A Nexis search of CSM over the years, however, finds that the Christian Science Monitor abandons those “key criteria” when race is involved.
A few examples from CSM editorials:
GERRYMANDERING is bad; ‘Jessemandering’ is good. Confusing? 7/30/91, p. 20.
Jessemandering – coined herewith, with a nod to America’s best-known black politician, Jesse Jackson – is the practice of drawing legislative district lines in meandering ways so as to maximize the voting power of minorities….
Jessemandering – race-conscious political districting – is an uncomfortable compromise in a society that aspires to be color-blind. Its presumption that Americans are best represented by people of their own race seems to disavow the melting-pot dream. In today’s America, though, the presumption is probably true. And race-conscious redistricting is in part a necessary remedy to decades during which – principally in the South but also in some Northern cities – black voting power was purposefully diluted to prevent the election of black candidates
Double-Edged Districts 6/30/93, p. 18
THE US Supreme Court’s 5-to-4 decision to allow five white voters from North Carolina to challenge the constitutionality of a black-majority congressional district could inject an unsettling factor into efforts to ensure minority representation in Congress and state legislatures….
Justice John Paul Stevens got it right when he noted that the Constitution has no requirement dealing with shapes of districts, and since it has been permissible to draw districts to solidify the voting strengths of ethnic groups or political parties, it certainly is valid to do so for a group “whose history…gave birth to the Equal Protection Clause.”
Fair-Mandering 7/3/95, p. 20
The Supreme Court vaulted gerrymandering back into the headlines last week by narrowly voting to undo an eccentrically carved black congressional district in Georgia. The court may thus have endangered districts in other states designed to redress past exclusion of blacks from political power….
Certainly those weird districts connected by thin strips of highway will be a red flag. But the justices know that party affiliation, geography, and urban-rural factors will continue to sway district drawing. And they realize that fair representation for minorities also deserves a seat at the mapping table, if not the whole table. Ironically, some recognition of race is still necessary on route to Dr. King’s dream of a colorblind society.
The Redistricting Rulings 6/20/96, p. 20
Last week the high court struck down congressional districts in Texas and North Carolina that were purposefully – and bizarrely – drawn to give blacks or Latinos a voting edge. Adhering to precedents laid down in 1993 and 1995, the five concurring justices sided with white plaintiffs who said their rights were violated by such racial gerrymandering.
The determination of the court majority to ban the use of race as a guide for drawing district lines opens a stream of questions. How, then, are Southern states, with their history of blocking black representation, going to meet the demands of the federal Voting Rights Act? Are largely minority districts being held to a standard of relative compactness that doesn’t constrain districts gerrymandered for purely political reasons?….
Etc.
[Query: if the Supremes ever grant CSM’s desire to outlaw political gerrymandering, would it abandon its endorsement of racial gerrymandering? Discriminating minds want to know.]
An even better idea of some of the distortions that afflict CSM’s thinking on this issue is nicely revealed by one of many articles (the above are all from editorials) it printed over the years.
Here’s an except from “Defending the Second Reconstruction” (4/8/94, p. 23) by Allan J. Lichtman, an American University historian who served as an expert witness in favor of racial gerrymandering in several cases:
Ironically, the Hayes decision (a case invalidating an oddly shaped district in Louisiana) sanctions the drawing of white ethnic or religious districts no matter what their shape. Only minority districts are suspect because minorities are protected by the 14th Amendment. Thus is history inverted; an amendment crafted to empower minorities is turned to their detriment. Lawsuits have since challenged minority districts in Georgia, Florida, and Texas.
Lichtman’s history is not inverted. It is inside out and upside down. First, if the Court found that a legislature had created a district because it was “white” or “religious,” I’m sure such a district would be invalidated, and without any hesitation. Nor is it true that “[o]nly minority districts are suspect because minorities are protected by the 14th Amendment.” The 14th Amendment, you’d think an American historian would know, protects all citizens, not just minorities. In any event, if a “majority” district were created for the purpose of making it easier for whites to elect a white, or Orthodox Jews to elect an Orthodox Jew, the 14th Amendment would clearly protect the rights of “minorities” inside that district to complain about discrimination.
