Jonah Goldberg has a very good column on bi-partisan racial hypocrisy. He’s absolutely right, though he could have made the point even stronger by including a mention of racial gerrymandering. The Republicans created majority-minority (which is to say, majority black) districts in a successful ploy to herd Democrats into fewer districts. That was, and is, offensive. The Democrats went along with that, and now argue that not putting enough blacks into a district is racist AND putting in more than enough to elect a Democrat is racist. That is mind-bogglingly offensive. (See my older discussion of partisan hypocrisy).
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In this case, I would have to dispute that it is racism that drives the racial gerrymandering. I have worked with politicians and in elections for decades. Gerrymandering is a purely political act.
Racial gerrymandering in the black/white sense occurs for no reason other than blacks choosing to vote almost uniformly Democratic. Republicans don’t overpack districts with blacks because they are black, but becuase they can be almost conclusively assumed to be Democrats. Democrats play the same game (to opposite result) for the same reason.
You’re absolutely right. But that the fact that racial gerrymandering is partisan and not racist doesn’t make the Republicans less hypocritcal for engaging in it, nor does it make any less absurd the Democratic charge that it is racist to pack either one too few or one too many blacks into a district.