[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 109 (Friday, June 30, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H6689-H6693]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
ASSAULT ON THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May
12, 1995, the gentleman from New York [Mr. Owens] is recognized for 60
minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
Mr. OWENS. Madam Speaker, yesterday the Supreme Court began the
process of dismantling the Voting Rights Act. I think it is very
important to note, however, that in that process it was a 5-to-4
decision. All hope is not lost. Since it was a 5-to-4 decision, I urge
all Americans to take a close look at the issue from the point of view
of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who offered a brilliant dissent from
the majority opinion.
It is very important that we understand what Ginsburg is saying. The
hope for the future lies in the following of the line of reasoning laid
down by Justice Ginsburg. This decision will not stand like many other
misguided Supreme Court decisions. One day we expect it to be
overturned. But it is here now. It is most unfortunate. It is a very
serious matter at this point.
Even with the decision of yesterday still alone, it would be a
serious matter because, after all, it goes to the heart of the civil
rights progress over the last 20 years. It deals with voting. It deals
with representation. The Voting Rights Act has been a huge success. The
Voting Rights Act by any measure has been a huge success all over the
Nation at every level, whether you are talking about municipal offices
or State offices, school boards, certainly at the level of Congress,
representation under the Voting Rights Act has greatly increased for
people of African descent, for people of Latino descent and for some
other minorities also.
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It has been a great success in the Congress. We now have 40 persons
of African descent. If we had a numerical formula of the 435 people in
Congress, if you had a numerical formula that every group should be
represented in proportion to its size in the population, and we do not
have such a formula, I am not asking for such a formula, but if you had
such a formula, the African American population is approximately 13
percent of the 260 million Americans; 33 million people. So the 13
percent would not be, if you had 13 percent, you would have a little
more than 40. Ten percent would give you 43, of course; maybe 44, but
40 is pretty close. The act has accomplished its purpose. It goes a
long way in the direction of accomplishing its purpose toward giving
representation which reflects the population.
So it is a serious matter to begin to roll this act backwards.
Yesterday, of course, it should be remembered, the Supreme Court did
not throw out the Voting Rights Act. The Voting Rights Act is not
nullified. The Voting Rights Act has not been declared
unconstitutional. The Voting Rights Act has been merely handicapped,
strangled a little bit; the process of strangling has begun. But it is
not dead. It is not destroyed.
I will talk more about that in a few minutes. If the decision with
respect to the Voting Rights Act had come along, it would be serious
enough, but the Supreme Court also moved on matters related to race and
civil rights in this particular session to strike down the setaside
contracts that the Federal Government has sponsored in the Adarand
decision. The Supreme Court also backed away from school integration in
a case that was also passed on.
{time} 1530
The direction is to declare that the 14th amendment, the 14th
amendment is for the purpose of establishing a color blind society. The
14th amendment may have that as one of its purposes, but the 14th
amendment first of all, most important of all, is an amendment which
was designed to bring the newly freed slaves into the mainstream of
American society legally.
The 14th amendment was developed at the end of the Civil War, after
the Emancipation Proclamation. There is no question, it is very crystal
clear what the first intent of the 14th amendment was. The first and
the most important intent of the 14th amendment was to deal with the
fact that legal status as citizens must be assigned and given to the
newly freed slaves. That was the one clear intent from the very
beginning.
If we expand that to cover other minorities, if we expand that to
cover other groups that are discriminated against, there is nothing
wrong with that, of course. Interpretation can be so much broader.
However, the first and most important purpose of the 14th amendment was
to make it clear once and for all, in the Constitution of America, that
all of the ex-slaves were to be considered as full citizens of the
United States of America.
What was the history of the Constitution before the 14th amendment?
Before the 14th amendment, the Constitution was not silent on slavery.
The Constitution was not silent on slavery. Unfortunately, the
Constitution stated earlier that in counting for representation in the
House of Representatives, slaves in the States would be considered
three-fifths of a man, male slaves, of course, would be considered
three-fifths of a man. After all, women did not have the right to vote,
whether they were free or slave. Each male slave would be considered
three-fifths of a man. That is in the Constitution.
The Constitution spoke again in the 14th amendment and made it clear
that nobody should be considered anything other than a full-fledged
citizen. It was done by the same people who had fought slavery. The
spirit of the abolitionist was on the floor of the House of
Representatives, so it is crystal clear what the first and most
important intent of the 14th amendment was. The misinterpretation of
the 14th amendment is at the heart of what went wrong with the Supreme
Court. Justice Ginsberg clearly understands that. The other Justices
choose not to understand it.
Mr. Speaker, I have been on the floor before and I have talked about
the need for a truth commission. The whole dark period of slavery in
the history of America has been pretty much ignored. In the textbooks,
nobody wants to talk about such unpleasant things. However, slavery
existed in the United States of America for 232 years. People chose to
call slavery the peculiar institution. It was not an institution.
Slavery was a criminal industry. Slavery was a criminal industry.
Slavery was designed to exact as much labor from human beings as
possible.
Some people have compared 232 years of slavery with the holocaust
perpetrated by Hitler. I do not think that is an appropriate
comparison. We do not need to borrow words like that. We are to give a
clear designation to what happened in slavery. Slavery was an attempt
to obliterate, obliterate the soul and the humanity of the African-
Americans who were transported here against their will. They wanted to
obliterate their souls, they wanted to obliterate their humanity, in
order to make them more efficient
beasts of burden, in order to make them work better, harder, and
derive more profits from their work. That is what slavery was all
about.
I think we need a truth commission to make the story of slavery known
to all Americans. We have glossed over it. We cannot have a Nation
exist in a healthy state that chooses to ignore a segment of its
history that went on for 232 years. Unless we come to grips with
recognizing what slavery was all about, we are always going to be
making the kinds of mistakes that the Supreme Court makes in its
interpretation of the 14th amendment. We need a truth commission. South
Africa has a truth commission that is set up. In Haiti they are talking
about setting up a truth commission.
Horrible things happened in South Africa. South Africa was a
situation where the minority population, minority white population,
almost enslaved but later on forced into second class citizenship the
majority black population, so South Africa, in order to move ahead, in
order to progress, refused to try to punish the people who were
responsible for the crimes during the era of apartheid. Instead of
trying to punish them, they are trying to seek reconciliation. The
process of reconciliation is being driven by a truth commission.
They said, ``We cannot punish everybody. If we tried to punish
everybody, we would probably end up devoting resources that would be
badly needed to build the country.'' If we tried to punish everybody,
we would probably inflame situations among groups and individuals which
would only lead to more violence. It would only make it more difficult
for the country to come together, so we do not want to try to punish.
We do not want justice. We cannot afford justice.
What the South Africans have said is that reconciliation is more
important than justice. They have gone forward. However, they said we
do want the truth known. We are not going to go forward as a nation
unless we have a commission that goes back and examines the crimes that
were committed, and tells the story. They will name names, but nobody
named, nobody found in the telling of the story to be guilty of a
crime, will be punished, no matter how heinous the crime is. If it took
place during the period before the new constitution came into effect,
they will not punish anybody. They have decided that vengeance belongs
to God. Probably only God is powerful enough to really take vengeance.
It would destroy their nation if they sought justice. Reconciliation
becomes more important than justice in South Africa.
The same pattern has been reproduced in Haiti. The Haitians have
decided they do not have enough jails, they do not have enough courts.
They cannot pursue the people responsible for 5,000 murders over the
last 3 years. They cannot pursue, except to a limited extent, the
people who perpetrated the crimes that were so heinous during the
period of time that Jean-Bertrand Aristide was kicked out of Haiti and
had to remain in exile here in the United States. They do not want to
destroy their nation by using their resources to seek justice. They do
not have the capacity to seek justice. They chose reconciliation,
instead, because it is the only positive way to go.
However, they wanted a truth commission. They want the story told.
[[Page H6691]]
They want it known who did these terrible deeds, who was responsible
for those awful murders and mutilations. They want this truth to be
known. They will not punish anybody, but they want the truth to be
known.
The United States of America needs a truth commission about slavery,
about slavery and the
implications of slavery for the African-American population of this
Nation. The truth should be told; a full commission to look at the
whole 232 years, and also to examine the 100 years after the 232 years,
where slavery was followed by an oppressive effort to keep the
descendants of the slaves from enjoying full citizenship; the
lynchings, the murders, the systematic denial of due process.
There were laws on the books which denied the right to vote. There
were laws on the books which made it clear that they did not want
African-Americans to have the right to have a trade, to be able to earn
a living as a carpenter, as a contractor, as a person who had a trade
that they could use. They could not get licenses. They had to work for
somebody else. On and on it goes. It all needs to be examined. When we
are talking about affirmative action and voting rights and the
necessity for special situations, we need to know the background. We
need a truth commission that establishes that.
The consequences of the Supreme Court's misguided decision are great,
as I said before. The Supreme Court, on the surface it sounds like
common sense, of course, would dictate that, of course, America is a
color blind society, and the 14th amendment for equal protection would
tell you that nobody, nobody should be given any special consideration.
Common sense dictated the Dred Scott decision, the Dred Scott
decision. Common sense dictated the Plessy versus Ferguson decision,
which said separate but equal schools is all you need to guarantee that
there is equal protection. The Plessy versus Ferguson decision endured
for many years before common sense was subordinated to an
interpretation of the law which clearly established the fact that you
cannot have separate but equal. The very fact that they are separate
means one of the two parties will not be equal. Therefore, the common
sense that appears to be so obvious to certain commentators on the
radio, on television, it is obvious that they could reach no other
conclusion. Common sense.
Read Justice Ginsburg's decision and learn about common sense as
interpreted by another scholar, by another person who is on the Supreme
Court. You will find common sense is not so obvious. There are
consequences that are immediate for the African-American community. The
consequences are great, indeed.
The consequences of this decision by the Supreme Court mean there
will be litigation. Already a district has been challenged in New York
State, in New York City. The gentlewoman from New York City, New York,
Nydia Velazquez, her district is being challenged, and of course there
will be litigation connected with that.
If any district in any part of the country is ordered to redraw its
lines, of course it affects all the other districts that are nearby, so
in Georgia, you will have all the districts in Georgia affected by the
decision yesterday with respect to the 11th Congressional District in
Georgia. In New York, if any one of the districts in downstate New York
are affected, all of the districts will be impacted. They have to be
redrawn.
The consequences will be great. The consequences will be great in
terms of political terms, partisan political terms, because it allows a
situation for a great deal of mischief. The Supreme Court has said that
politics is war without blood. If politics is war without blood, then
no general will pass up an opportunity to take advantage of whatever
situation opens up, so the generals in the Republican Party will take
advantage.
All kinds of things are about to happen in the African-American
community. We have always enjoyed certain kinds of privileges in terms
of certain groups have never been very popular. The public has never
supported certain parties. Therefore, you can expect that people who
think one way will not declare themselves to belong to a certain party,
or they will not declare themselves to be conservative or to be in
favor of certain kinds of policies which are detrimental to the masses
of people that they represent in a given congressional district.
We can expect more subterfuge. We can expect Edridge Ames types in
the political arena, pretending that they are in favor of certain kinds
of policies, but using the unsettled situation to take advantage of it,
and running candidates in the primary as well as in the general
election; all kinds of scenarios will be unleashed as a result of this
tampering with the Voting Rights Act.
There is a great challenge to the black leadership that is being set
forth here. The Voting Rights Act brings it home, makes it crystal
clear, that there is a state of emergency in the black community. In
the African-American community there is a state of emergency. I have
said this several times before on the floor of this House. The state of
emergency now should be clear to everybody everywhere in the African-
American community.
The state of emergency relates to the attack on affirmative action,
the attack on the Voting Rights Act, the attack on school integration.
Those are minor compared to the attack on the poor population of the
African-American communities. African-Americans still are predominantly
poor. Sixty percent of African-Americans in the United States of
America could be classified as poor.
There is another marginal group that if they miss one paycheck at
their job, they will fall into the poverty category, also, so poverty
and the consequences of poverty are experienced regularly by an
African-American community that came out of slavery after 232 years of
slavery, and found no help, no Marshall Plan. The Freedmen's Bureau
that was set up was a tiny little operation for a few years, but no
effort was made to help millions of people in a transition from slavery
to full citizenship, so the consequences of that have come down from
one
generation to another. It is not surprising that they are poor.
The economic consequences have generated other problems. When people
have decent incomes, they can take care of most of their own problems.
When people have decent incomes they do not need welfare, public
housing. When people have decent incomes, they can take care of their
family problems to a greater degree.
Every family has problems: middle class, the rich, working class,
poor. Everybody has problems. However, what gives the middle class and
the rich great advantages is they have money that can help to deal with
their problems, and they do not have to have their problems become
public, a public consideration.
The black community does not have that. Large amounts, the great,
predominant percentage of the African-American community are poor.
There is a book that was written in the 1930's called Black
Bourgeoisie, by E. Franklin Frazer. For many years this was a textbook
for black college students and black leaders. Everybody had to read it,
the Black Bourgeoisie. It was a scathing criticism of the mores and
values of the emerging black middle class. It talked about how they
were preoccupied totally with themselves, preoccupied totally with
their own concerns, and they engaged in activities which were
unproductive. They spent large amounts of money on consumer products in
an attempt to demonstrate that they were affluent.
A number of criticisms were made, and sometimes, perhaps, maybe they
were too harsh. The black bourgeoisie emerging out of the 1930's needs
to be congratulated. Things were so difficult, there were so many
obstacles and so many rules. You could not become, as I said before, an
electrician, a plasterer. You could not be a contractor. Those people
who were able to make some headway against all the oppression and all
the roadblocks, they deserve credit for being able to economically
improve themselves, no matter what problems they had.
{time} 1545
If they were not generous and they were not magnanimous in reaching
out to their communities and providing leadership, then they can be
forgiven to some degree.
There was a new effort that started with Martin Luther King, however.
In the 1960's, the middle class provided
[[Page H6692]]
the leadership which reached out to the masses of African-Americans and
said, ``We are all in this boat together, we all have these problems,
and we are going to join to wage an assault to obtain our civil
rights.''
The spirit of the 1960's and the spirit of Martin Luther King that
went forward was a spirit that was cradled, nurtured by the black
middle class, the African-American middle class, the so-called black
bourgeoisie, you might say, if you want to stay with the terminology of
E. Franklin Frazier. That black bourgeoisie provided magnanimous,
generous, courageous leadership in the fight to get the Voting Rights
Act, to get the school integration, to end employment discrimination,
to get affirmative action. They are to be applauded.
They came in large numbers to the Congress. It
was clear that the congresspeople who came here and were parts of
the Black Caucus were graduates from a movement that cared about the
majority of African-Americans.
The danger with this present situation, one of the dangers that we
will have to deal with is the fact that there will be Benedict Armolds
in great numbers. There will be large numbers of people who will
masquerade as being concerned about the masses, but they will take
advantage of the situation.
We may have an elected black bourgeoisie that cares only about
itself, only about the deals that they can make, only about their own
status, and deceives the great masses. We have a possibility of large
numbers of Judas men and Judas women, betraying, deceiving. That is one
of the consequences of the process that has been set in motion, the
domino, rolling, in respect to the Voting Rights Act, an unsettling
number of situations, making it possible for opportunists to come in.
Let me go back to the very beginning, the Supreme Court decision that
set in motion all of this. I said the Supreme Court decision began the
process of dismantling the Voting Rights Act. It was a continuum of an
assault on civil rights legislation, civil rights laws. By itself it is
dangerous enough, but in that context it is even more dangerous.
We should think very seriously about what is taking place. I think
God must spend many days weeping when He observes the United States of
America. God must spend many days weeping when He observes that He has
given so much to this land of plenty, beautiful and spacious skies, law
and order for long periods of time, no great war to devastate our
cities and destroy our countryside, prosperty.
We are the richest Nation that ever existed on the face of the Earth,
and the riches have not ceased. Profits are being made on Wall Street,
profits are being made by corporations at a greater rate than ever
before. People with jobs and wage earners are not benefiting from that.
There is no correlation anymore, no association between the profits
made by corporations and the welfare benefits received by the working
people of America.
They are downsizing and taking away jobs at the same time they are
making big profits. Automation, computerization, a number of things
allow them to make big profits, increase their investments, increase
their activities, produce more products, while at the same time they
reduce the number of jobs.
There is a problem there, but in general this is still the richest
Nation in the history of the world. The Fortune 500 corporations, most
of them have budgets greater than most of the nations of the world.
Unparalleled wealth. Never before did such wealth exist.
God must spend a lot of time weeping when He looks at all of this
that He has bestowed on the United States Of America and then look at
the pettiness that is driving many of our political activities, the
pettiness which makes affirmative action a critical problem.
Affirmative action is not a critical problem.
Affirmative actions has not resulted in any great movement of
African-Americans anywhere. They are not in large numbers in the
boardrooms of corporations. They are not in large numbers, I assure
you, in the top executive suites. They are not in large numbers, or any
credible number, in the management structures after all these years of
affirmative action, less than 30 years of affirmative action.
When you look at the statistics, it is appalling how little has been
accomplished for the people who were supposed to be the first
beneficiaries. Going back again to the first intent of the 14th
amendment, the first affirmative action programs were designed and
fashioned to deal with the descendants of slaves, to deal with the
situation of righting past wrongs. But what has been accomplished?
There has been no great move forward.
Consider the shoeshine boys when you go through the airports and
places where people are prosperous and they pay a lot for a shoeshine.
There was a time when a shoeshine boy was a stereotype and people
though most of the shoeshine boys in the country were black, black men,
black boys. The shoeshine boy was a subject of humor or subject of
ridicule.
But when you travel from now on, look at the shoeshine attendants in
the airports. When you go to a fancy club where they are paying $3 for
a regular shine and $5 for an executive shine, which means if you can
do 4 shines per hour, for $3 a shine, you can make $12 an hour; for $5
a shine, you can make $20 an hour. That is not a bad pay.
When it was 35 cents per shine and 5 cents per shine and even $1 a
shine, most of the shine boys and
the shine men were African-American, people of African descent. But if
you look now, do your own survey and you will see that not only have we
not made it to the boardrooms of corporations, not only have African-
Americans not made it to the executive suites, not only have African-
Americans not made it to middle management, but they are declining even
in the area of the shoeshine industry, because as the benefits of the
industry go up, the wages go up, other people have displaced the
African-Americans.
Take a look for yourself and you will see a most interesting
phenomenon. If you look at waiters in hotels, it used to be
predominantly expected, especially in the South, the waiters were
predominantly African-American waiters, but as the standard of living
has risen and the wages of the waiters have risen, you find fewer and
fewer African-American waiters in the hotels.
Not only are we not in the boardrooms and the executive suites, we
have not held on to the waiting jobs, waiting tables in hotels and
restaurants. Take a look for yourself. Do your own survey.
Unfortunately, ladies and gentlemen, even in the professions where
the black middle class has striven so consciously to try to move, there
was a time when 5 percent of the teachers in America were black, were
African-Americans. The percentage of teachers who are African-American
has gone down. The percentage of law enforcement personnel, policemen,
who are African-American has gone down. The percentage of doctors who
are African-American has gone down in the last 20 years.
Not only is affirmative action not succeeding in the industrial
sector, in the corporate sector, in the areas that were targeted,
overall black employment, blacks climbing up the ladder in terms of
wealth, in terms of responsibility in industry or in academia, it has
decreased and declined.
God must be very upset and spend a lot of days weeping when He looks
at so little having been done for those who need help most, and sees
the outrage, and the amount of energy and effort being poured into
criticism of affirmative action and criticism of those tiny, very tiny
gains that have been made. As I said before, many of the gains have
turned into losses.
God must spend a lot of days weeping when He sees that so much has
been given to the United States of America and they behave in such
petty ways. We have a history of being a country that I am sure God
must appreciate a great deal and the world must appreciate a great
deal.
We have been celebrating 50 years after World War II. As I watch the
documentaries and get educated in greater detail than ever before about
what went on in World War II, I am sure the whole world applauds the
courage and the generosity, the lack of selfishness of Americans the
men who died in Normandy on D-Day or the men who stormed Iwo Jima;
Okinawa. All of that kind of courage and that kind of
[[Page H6693]]
going forward to save the world from totalitarianism and Naziism and
tyranny, I am sure God must applaud a great deal.
But here we are at a point where peace reigns basically, and instead
of moving on to build a new society, a society where the wealth of this
great Nation can be shared, where the wealth can be used to take care
of the needs of everybody, instead of moving in that direction, we have
chosen to move in the opposite direction and to hunker down and begin
to hoard the benefits and hoard the wealth, and begin to throw
overboard a certain segment of society and say, ``We don't care what
happens to them. We don't really care.''
As I said before, God must spend a lot of days looking at all this
and be very upset that we are so petty and moving in such a negative
direction so rapidly.
But all hope is not lost, because there are great things happening
all over the world. The accumulation of all these great things may
begin to have an impact on what is happening here in this country.
Even in this country, the Southern Baptist Church last week
apologized for their position on slavery, the Southern Baptist Church,
which was created as a result of a schism at the time of the Civil War.
The big issue in the Southern Baptist Church was that they wanted to
label African-Americans, Negroes, as being less than human and not
worthy of God's blessings, that they were not to be considered in the
Christian church as equals.
They apologized. The Southern Baptists apologized. They voted, large
number of delegates, to apologize and to take note of the fact that the
evils that were generated by slavery still exist and they must work to
eradicate them. The Southern Baptists did that.
Some people say, well, their membership is declining. There is some
ulterior motive. I do not care. They did it. For one glorious moment,
they rose to the occasion and they admitted that they wanted to tell
the truth, they wanted to be a part of the truth, they wanted to get
away from the doctrine of obliteration. The doctrine of obliteration
said that the African-American, the African transported here, was not a
human being, and therefore they could be made beasts of burden, more
efficient beasts of burden, by treating them like beasts. The Southern
Baptists represent just one of those many areas where there is hope.
There is hope in the Supreme Court, too, when Ruth Bader Ginsburg
writes the decision of the kind that she wrote. Justice Ginsburg took
just the opposite approach of Justice Kennedy, who wrote the decision
for the majority. Justice Kennedy based his ruling on the Shaw versus
Reno case. I think the majority opinion for that was written by Justice
O'Connor, with Justice Clarence Thomas, of course, supporting it in
great measure.
Justice Ginsburg says that it is not common sense. It is not obvious
to her, as the law is made and the intent of the constitutional
amendment is examined, it is not at all clear to her that the 14th
amendment is primarily concerned with being colorblind and not
concerned with remedying past wrongs, which the full legal integration
of the African-Americans, the former salves and their descendants into
American life.
Let me must read a few excerpts from Justice Ginsburg's dissenting
opinion. As you know, it was a 5-4 decision, and Justice Ginsburg was
joined in her dissent by Justices Stevens, Bryant and Souter.
Legislative districting is highly political business. This
Court has generally respected the competence of state
legislatures to attend to the task. When race is the issue,
however, we have recognized the need for judicial
intervention to prevent dilution of minority voting strength.
{time} 1600
Generations of white discrimination against African-
Americans as citizens and voters account for that
surveillance.
In other words, what she is saying is that we have generally kept our
hands off, the judiciary has kept its hands off the reapportionment
process.
There was a series of cases that established clearly that it was
better to leave it to the State legislature and the only regular,
systematic intervention of the courts came with the Voting Rights Act
for the purpose of dealing with the problem of giving African-Americans
their full voting rights and avoiding the dilution of the voting
strength of minorities.
I go back to Justice Ginsburg's dissent, and I quote:
Two years ago in Shaw versus Reno this Court took up a
claim analytically distinct from a vote-dilution claim. Shaw
authorized judicial intervention in extremely irregular
apportionments.
In other words she is saying that we started something 2 years ago
when we considered the North Carolina case, Shaw versus Reno. For the
first time we moved away from the voter-dilution concern of the Court
and we moved into a new era. We moved into an area where extremely
irregular apportionments, the way the district looked, or the
circumstances under which the district was created, became a concern of
the Court. And she does not agree, of course, that that movement was
justified.
To continue quoting Justice Ginsburg:
Today the Court expands the judicial role announcing that
Federal courts are to undertake searching review of any
district with contours predominantly motivated by race.
Strict scrutiny will be triggered not only when traditional
districting practices are abandoned, but also when those
practices are subordinated to, given less weight, than race.
Applying this new ``race-as-predominant-factor'' standard,
the Court invalidates Georgia's districting plan, even though
Georgia's Eleventh District, the focus of today's dispute,
bears the imprint of familiar districting practices. Because
I do not endorse the Court's new standard and would not upset
Georgia's plan, I dissent.
Continuing to quote Justice Ginsburg:
At the outset it may be useful to note points on which the
court does not divide. First, we agree that federalism and
the slim judicial competence to draw district lines weigh
heavily against judicial intervention in apportionment
decisions; as a rule, the task should remain within the
domain of state legislatures.
Second, for most of our Nation's history, the franchise has
not been enjoyed equally by black citizens and white voters.
I want to just repeat; I am quoting from Justice Ginsburg and I want
to read that again:
For most of our Nation's history the franchise has not been
enjoyed equally by black citizens and white voters.
To redress past wrongs and to avert any recurrence of
exclusion of blacks from political processes, Federal courts
now respond to Equal Protection Clause and Voting Rights Act
complaints of state action that dilutes minority voting
strength.
Third, to meet statutory requirements, state legislatures
must sometimes consider race as a factor highly relevant to
the drawing of district lines.
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