I have complained here more than once about the shameless Republican hypocrisy of co-operating with the Democrats in creating “majority/minority” districts. These districts are created by cramming enough blacks into a district to elect a black representative; this usually involves “bleaching” the surrounding districts, making them more Republican. As Roger Clegg and Edward Blum pointed out some time ago:
In 1990, the Congressional Black Caucus and the racial advocacy groups formed a political alliance with the GOP to promote the creation of ultra-safe, “minority-majority” districts. The GOP reasoned that these twisted and contorted districts would be so heavily packed with minorities that the surrounding white districts would be bleached of their core Democrat constituency and would likely vote Republican. Dozens of heavily minority districts—with shapes likened to “Rorschach tests” or “bugs splattered on a windshield”—were drawn in the Deep South as well as in some non-Southern cities, such as New York. Some believe this dynamic had as much to do with the Republican gains in 1994 as did the unpopularity of President Clinton’s failed health-care initiative.
In this interesting bargain the Republicans have been rewarded for their abandonment of principle with a net gain in Republican representatives; the Democrats, as their reward for assigning voters to districts by race, have received the satisfaction of more black representatives; and the rest of us at least have the reward of fewer Democratic representatives.
From a strictly partisan perspective, the Democrats were led by their devotion to racial politics to make a bad bargain. Now that same devotion may prevent them from taking advantage of an opportunity to escape some of its consequences.
Ryan Sager points out on RealClearPolitics today that the Supremes’ essentially upholding Tom DeLay’s Texas redistricting gives Democrats the green light to use mid-term redistricting to their own advantage, but that their bondage to racial politics will probably prevent them from doing so:
… the racial politics would be difficult for the Democrats to manage. Typically, civil-rights leaders have looked for concentrations of black voters to elect black representatives. Distributing these black voters differently might lead to more Democrats being elected, but fewer African Americans.
Is this palatable to black leaders as part of a strategy to even the electoral playing field with Republicans? Or is it too politically volatile?
When most black elected officials look at someone like Clarence Thomas or Condoleeza Rice or Miguel Estrada, they don’t see a black or a woman or a Hispanic but a Republican, and vote accordingly. With Sager, however, I wonder how many black officeholders would be willing to reduce the number of black officeholders in order to increase the number of Democrats.
