Discriminations

Racial preference in college admissions, hiring, contracting, etc., is based on the assumption (or in many cases, a quasi-religious faith) that blacks and Hispanics cannot compete on equal terms with whites and Asian — either because they are damaged goods, handicapped (or disabled, if you prefer the politically correct term) by centuries of racist oppression or because of current, ongoing racial discrimination.

Racial preference in voting, enshrined in the Voting Rights Act’s requirement of racial gerrymandering, is based on the same assumption, although here it emphasizes continuing white refusal to vote for black candidates.

The assumption has long been wrong, and the recent election, as Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom point out in today’s Wall Street Journal, should be the nail in its coffin.

The conventional wisdom among voting-rights advocates and political scientists has been that whites will not vote for black candidates in significant numbers. Hence the need for federal protection in the form of race-based districts that create safe black constituencies where black candidates are sure to win.

But the myth of racist white voters was destroyed by this year's presidential election.

Six out of 10 votes for Obama, they point out, came from whites. Although he lost the “white” vote by 55% to 43%, no Democrat since Lyndon Johnson has received a majority of the white vote, and Obama’s 43% was actually higher than Gore’s 43% or Kerry’s 41%.

So what happened to all those “racists” or “rednecks” that John Murtha spoke of so recently? If there had been that many of them, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Virginia and Florida would have gone the other way, and we would have a President-elect McCain today. Racism is the Sherlock Holmes dog that did not bark in the night.

Consider Iowa, with only a miniscule African-American population. The 5% of voters who said race was the most important factor in their choice of whom to vote for backed Mr. Obama 54% to 45%. Or consider Minnesota and Wisconsin, also overwhelmingly white, where Mr. Obama's lead was 18% and 21% respectively among the 5% to 7% of voters who made race their highest priority.

The insistence on “max-black” districts, like racial preference everywhere, magnifies rather than reduces racial polarization, and it leads to inanities worthy of Saturday Night Live:

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.

Over five years ago I wrote (here):

The Discriminations Hypocrisy Award goes to the Republicans. Under Bush I they realized that they could trumpet their fidelity to the Voting Rights Act, and by implication to black voters, by herding black voters into “majority-minority” districts that would be likely to elect black representatives for the first time. And by draining the surrounding districts of black, i.e., Democratic, votes, the policy would have the added benefit -- purely incidental, I’m sure -- of electing more Republicans. The Democrats, unable to oppose procedures that would lead to the election of more blacks, were effectively silenced and co-opted.

It was a brilliant tactical move, sacrificing only principle. Twenty-six such districts were created after the 1990 census, greatly contributing to subsequent Republican gains in the South.

The necessity for “majority-minority” districts was based on the assumption of “bloc voting,” that whites wouldn’t vote for blacks, but it did not take long for that assumption to be proven false. Once it became clear that super-majorities of blacks were not necessary to elect at least a significant number of blacks, the Democrats slowly emerged from the woodwork and began to argue (remember, they’ve never been addicted to consistency) that herding too many of blacks into “majority-minority” districts was racist, smacking of apartheid. At the same time, however, they argued that placing too few blacks in a district was also racist. To the Democrats, “too many” means more than enough to assure the election of a Democrat, and “too few” means not enough. By some cosmic co-incidence, the Democrats implicitly argue, that precise balance is what the law requires. This behavior thus has earned the Democrats the much-deserved Discriminations Award for Brazenness.

Both parties, in short, have proven themselves unprincipled. When the Republicans took over the state government in Virginia recently, for example, they moved quickly to round up as many blacks as possible and, freely admitting they were “taking race into account” as one factor among many (sound familiar?), herded them together in as few districts as possible. Not to be undone on the unprincipled front, the Democrats brought in heavy hitter Ronald Klain, Gore’s top advisor and head lawyer in the Florida recount, who, presumably with a straight face, argued to the Virginia Supreme Court: “We submit that what was going on here was race-conscious districting....” (Washington Post, Sept. 13, 2002, p. B5) The Virginia Supremes (including the new black chief justice) were not amused, and ruled for the Republicans.

The Thernstroms conclude, persuasively:

racially gerrymandered districts are an impediment to political integration at all levels of government. Herding African-Americans into “max-black” districts forces black candidates to run in heavily gerrymandered districts. The candidates who emerge from those districts are, unsurprisingly, typically not the most well-positioned to appeal to a broader swath of the electorate.

Black candidates can win in multi-ethnic and even majority-white districts with color-blind voting. Mr. Obama should make it a priority to give more aspiring black politicians the opportunity to stand before white (and Latino and Asian and other ethnic) voters. He won, so can they.

American voters have turned a racial corner. The law should follow in their footsteps.