[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 152 (Wednesday, September 27, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H9585-H9589]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 REDISTRICTING IN THE STATE OF GEORGIA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May 
12, 1995, the gentlewoman from Georgia [Ms. McKinney] is recognized for 
60 minutes.
  Ms. McKINNEY. Mr. Speaker, as this legislative week begins, I would 
like to take an opportunity to once again 

[[Page H 9586]]
commend the members of the Georgia Legislative Black Caucus who are now 
preparing to have their annual conference weekend with workshops, and I 
am absolutely certain that the issue of redistricting will take center 
stage in that conference weekend.

                              {time}  2230

  The Georgia Legislative Black Caucus, under the leadership of State 
Senator Diane Harvey Johnson, has done a wonderful job, and can never 
really be commended enough for its dedication and its ability to 
withstand all of the trials and tribulations of the recently adjourned 
special session under the leadership of the redistricting task force 
that, with David Scott at its helm, the Georgia Legislative Black 
Caucus was able to wade through very treacherous waters.
  While the Georgia General Assembly failed to provide the citizens of 
the State of Georgia with a redistricting plan, certainly the Georgia 
Legislative Black Caucus can be credited with preventing a horrendous 
plan from passing onto the desk of the Governor.
  I would also like to take a moment to say a few words about one of my 
leaders in the Georgia Legislative Black Caucus, State Representative 
Tyrone Brooks. When I was elected to the Georgia House of 
Representatives in 1988, I began, after having been sworn in in January 
1989, to serve with my father, and the two of us became the only 
father-daughter legislative team in the country. Of course, we were 
much celebrated, but even though my father had been a member of the 
Georgia Legislature for over 20 years, it was to State Representative 
Tyrone Brooks that I have turned for leadership. I am proud that he 
took me under his wing and made me into half the legislator and civil 
rights leader that he is for the residents of the State of Georgia.
  Mr. Speaker, on the grounds of the Georgia State Capitol there is a 
statue. The name of that statue is expelled because of color. This 
statue commemorates the service of 33 black people who were elected, 
duly elected, to the Georgia legislature, but who in 1868 were expelled 
for no other reason than the color of their skin.
  Since 1965, the Voting Rights Act has utilized the tool of 
redistricting to enhance equal opportunity in the area of politics, but 
in 1993, something happened. That something was the Shaw versus Reno 
case, which set a new standard in redistricting principles. That new 
standard is a beauty standard, the beauty standard being that districts 
have to look a certain way in order to be effective, and if those 
districts do not conform to a particular standard of beauty, then there 
is something inherently wrong with those districts.

  It is through this tool of resdistricting that we have been able to 
perfect our democracy. I recall from a publication called ``Sister 
Outsider'' a quote. The quote is, ``For the master's tools will never 
dismantle the master's house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him 
at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine 
change.''
  The question I pose is does my presence in this body, in the United 
States House of Representatives, dismantle the master's house? What is 
it about the presence of African-Americans, women, Latinos, other 
people of color, that causes discomfort to some people in this country? 
Could it be the things that I dare say, or is it merely just the way I 
look that causes some people to say, ``This is not your place''? Then, 
of course, that would compel the highest court in the land, the United 
States Supreme Court, to apply a double standard.
  I have an article here written by one of the members of that 
community of dedicated lawyers who are out there laboring long and 
hard, and their only effort is to try and make this country a better 
place for all Americans. The title of this article is ``Gerrymander 
Hypocrisy: Supreme Court's Double Standard.'' It was written by Jamon 
B. Raskin, professor of constitutional law and associate dean at the 
Washington College of Law at the American University.
  It begins:

       Racial double standards are nothing new in American law, 
     but the Supreme Court's voting rights jurisprudence has 
     turned farcical. State legislators redrawing Congressional 
     and State legislative districts in the 1990s now carry both a 
     license and a warning from the Court. The license, granted 
     for decades, is to draw far-flung, squiggly lines all over 
     the map in order to guarantee the legislators' reelection or 
     the reelection of incumbent white U.S. House Members. The 
     warning, issued in the Court's 1993 Shaw v. Reno decision, is 
     not to draw any such bizarre districts with the purpose of 
     creating African-American or Latino political majorities.
       These two Supreme Court positions are on a logical 
     collision course. From the day it was decided, Shaw looked 
     deeply suspicious, since it imposed strict scrutiny on only 
     those oddly shaped districts where African-Americans or 
     Latinos are in a majority. The Court had never before found 
     that the Constitution required districts to have certain 
     shapes, sizes, or looks. District appearance was a 
     question for the States. Now, in the name of tidy district 
     lines and fighting what Justice Sandra Day O'Connor called 
     ``political apartheid,'' a term never used by the Court to 
     describe slavery, Jim Crow, poll taxes, literacy tests, or 
     white primaries, the court cast doubt on dozens of 
     racially integrated districts represented by blacks and 
     Latinos.
       In the illustrative case of Vera versus Richards last 
     August, a panel of three Republican judges threw out as 
     racial gerrymander two majority-black congressional districts 
     and one majority-Latino district in Texas, solemnly invoking 
     Martin Luther King all along the way.
       Meanwhile, the same panel categorically rejected challenges 
     to majority-white districts whose perimeters looked every bit 
     as peculiar as those of the minority districts. The panel was 
     not disturbed that House incumbents from Texas were actively 
     involved in the redistricting process, or that they were so 
     influential in getting districts drawn for incumbency 
     protection that all but one of them had been reelected in 
     1992. Neither were the judges troubled by the fact that 
     minority districts appear contorted precisely because white 
     Democratic incumbents, looking for liberal votes, took big 
     geographic bites out of minority communities.
       By blessing the entrenchment of white incumbents and wiping 
     out black and Latino majority districts, the district court 
     is only following the perverse logic of Supreme Court 
     doctrine. The ``equal protection'' clause of the 14th 
     Amendment, enacted in 1868 to dismantle white supremacy, has 
     been twisted by the Court to mean that African-Americans and 
     other minorities may not form a numerical majority in any 
     district unless they are in communities that are 
     geographically compact and residentialy isolated.
       Without consciously drawn minority districts, most States 
     would continue to have lily white House delegations. No black 
     has ever been elected to Congress from the South in a 
     majority-white district. Even today, with the new districts 
     (hanging on by a thread), minorities remain underrepresented 
     in Congress and in every State legislature.
       Furthermore, these districts discriminate against no one.
       On the other hand, ``incumbency protection'' districts are 
     deeply offensive to democratic values.
       By fencing out unfriendly voters and potential rivals, 
     incumbents make districts in their own image, and turn 
     elections into a formality. In our self-perpetuating 
     incumbentocracy, voters don't really pick public officials on 
     Election Day because public officials pick voters on 
     redistricting day.
       But in the Court's new racial Rorschach test, incumbent-
     friendly ink blot districts are lawful if the race in the 
     majority is white.

  We have, through these districts, the opportunity to elect people who 
would otherwise not grace these halls, and there has been a lot of 
misinformation about these districts. Laughlin McDonald is the voting 
rights litigator for the ACLU. In an effort to try and dispel some of 
the misinformation about these districts, he wrote two pieces, one of 
them entitled ``Exploding Redistricting Myths'' and the other one 
entitled ``Drown in a Sea of Misinformation.'' I will submit both of 
these pieces to the Record, because it is important that all of the 
misinformation that has been thrown out by various scholarly people be 
challenged and rebutted at each step along the way.
  Mr. Speaker, in the most recently adjourned special session of the 
Georgia Legislature, we had something very unfortunate happen. Of 
course, we understood that the 11th Congressional District had been 
challenged by primarily the Democratic candidate who ran against me, 
who lost because of an ineffective message, and so was able to find 
some recourse in the courts. However, something else happened. That 
something else was that the Second Congressional District was added 
into the mix, so now the lower court, the same lower court in Georgia 
that found the 11th Congressional District to be unconstitutional, now 
is going to have a hearing on the constitutionality of the Second 
Congressional District of Georgia, which is also a majority-minority 
district.

[[Page H 9587]]

  The Georgia Legislative News of August 21 chronicles what happens. 
The headline is ``Parks Attacks Second District,'' and it begins:

       In an unexpected legal maneuver, Georgia's Second 
     Congressional District is under attack by Lee Parks, attorney 
     for the original plaintiffs in the Johnson v. Miller suit, 
     which resulted in the 11th District being declared 
     unconstitutional.

  What started out as one majority-black district under attack now 
results in two majority-black districts being under attack. 
Unfortunately, in the September 26 edition of the Atlanta Constitution, 
the headline reads, ``Another Majority-Black District At Risk.'' First 
there was one, and now there are two.
  It begins:

       About Face: State Admits Racial Gerrymandering. The United 
     States Justice Department has abandoned its defense of 
     Georgia's Second Congressional District, and State attorneys 
     on Monday admitted that race dictated the drawing of its 
     lines, putting the future of another majority-black district 
     in jeopardy.

  Now, I know that we have at the Justice Department very young, 
idealistic, dedicated attorneys who have experienced 30 years of 
victory in the area of voting rights, and all of a sudden now, after 
Shaw versus Reno, we have 30 years of precedent being rapidly eroded.

                              {time}  2245

  I would just hope that the Justice Department is not losing its will, 
that it is not punch-drunk after the first round. Now, more than ever, 
we need people who are dedicated to the proposition that everybody 
deserves a voice in this Government, to be prepared to fight, to make 
sure that everyone does have a voice in this Government.
  Mr. Speaker, I have been through the story of how in the Georgia 
legislative special session a particular special interest became so 
pronounced that it was impossible for the legislature to conclude with 
a congressional map, and that particular special interest is the kaolin 
industry that pervades the economy of the State of Georgia and as well 
the legislature of the State of Georgia. There were maps that were 
produced, but those maps conveniently excluded the kaolin belt from the 
11th Congressional District of Georgia, which I represent.
  Mr. Speaker, because it is only fair that those counties be included 
in the 11th Congressional District, the Georgia legislative Black 
Caucus fought for the opportunity of the residents of those counties to 
be able to elect their candidate of choice, and so by fighting, we were 
not able to have a map.
  The whole issue of the double standard can be seen in these maps that 
I have. The 6th district of Illinois contains a super- majority that is 
white, of 95 percent, the 6th Congressional District of Illinois has 
not been challenged in any court.
  Mr. Speaker, we also have the 6th Congressional District of Texas, 
which has a supermajority. That supermajority is white. This district 
has gone through the same scrutiny as has the 11th Congressional 
District of Georgia. This district, with its squiggly lines, apparently 
conforms to the beauty standard. It passes the beauty test. It is a 
beautiful district, so ruled by the courts. It is constitutional.
  Yet the 11th Congressional District of Georgia, which I think is one 
of the most beautiful districts ever drawn by any legislature in the 
State of Georgia, has also a supermajority of 64 percent that happens 
to be black, has undergone the same kind of scrutiny as the 6th 
Congressional District of Texas, but Georgia's 11th Congressional 
District has been declared unconstitutional by the lower court and even 
our own U.S. Supreme Court.
  So I stand today before this body as a representative without a 
district representing people who deserve to have their voices heard in 
the area of public policymaking. Of course, whatever happens will be 
determined by the lower court in Georgia, and we will be forced to 
abide by and will happily abide by the dictates of the law of the land, 
but of course it does not mean that the law is always right, and it 
certainly does not mean that the law is color blind.
  In 1868 those 33 black members of the Georgia Legislature were 
expelled because of the color of their skin, and here I stand facing 
the same fate, but I do not stand alone, and that is because there too 
have been others, even from this body, who have preceded me. Thank 
goodness we have this thing called a Congressional Record, because we 
can go back and we can search the Record and find the words of other 
Members of Congress, others similarly situated, others who also faced 
expulsion for no other reason than the color of their skin.
  Mr. Speaker, one such representative, the last, in fact to grace 
these halls in the beginning of the 20th century was Representative 
George White from North Carolina. I would like to read what 
Representative White had to say. This is in 1901:

       I want to enter a plea for the colored man, the colored 
     woman, the colored boy, and the colored girl of this country. 
     I would not thus digress from the question at issue and 
     detain the House in a discussion of the interests of this 
     particular people at this time but for the constant and the 
     persistent efforts of certain gentlemen upon this floor to 
     mold and rivet public sentiment against us.
       At no time perhaps during the 56th Congress were these 
     charges and countercharges containing as they do slanderous 
     statements more persistently magnified and pressed upon the 
     attention of the Nation than during the consideration of the 
     recent reapportionment bill. As stated some days ago on this 
     floor by me, I then sought diligently to obtain an 
     opportunity to answer some of the statements made by 
     gentlemen from different States, but the privilege was denied 
     me, and I therefore must embrace this opportunity to say out 
     of season, perhaps, that which I was not permitted to say in 
     season.
       Now, Mr. Chairman, before concluding my remarks, I want to 
     submit a brief recipe for the solution of the so-called 
     American Negro problem. He asks no special favors, but simply 
     demands that he be given the same chance for existence, for 
     earning a livelihood, for raising himself in the scales of 
     manhood and womanhood, that are accorded to kindred 
     nationalities. Treat him as a man. Go into his home and learn 
     of his social conditions, learn of his cares, his troubles, 
     and his hopes for the future. Gain his confidence, open the 
     doors of industry to him.
       This, Mr. Chairman, is perhaps the Negro's temporary 
     farewell to the American Congress. But let me say phoenix-
     like, he will rise up someday and come again. These parting 
     words are in behalf of an outraged, heartbroken, bruised and 
     bleeding, but God-fearing people; faithful, industrious, 
     loyal people, rising people, full of potential force.
       Sir, I am pleading for the life of a human being. The only 
     apology that I have to make for the earnestness with which I 
     have spoken is that I am pleading for the life, the liberty, 
     the future happiness, and manhood suffrage for one-eighth of 
     the entire population of the United States.

  George White did not leave Congress quietly. He fixed the record. For 
as long as there will be a United States of America, there will be 
people who can pull this Congressional Record and find his words there.
  I guess you could say I am doing the same thing. For if it is the 
will of this country that African-Americans can no longer serve in the 
U.S. Congress, I guarantee you that I will fix this record. I, too, 
will speak on behalf of an outraged people who only want the 
opportunity to participate as full citizens in their Government.
  The State of Georgia did not want us, three of us; the State of 
Georgia did not defend the congressional map that produced its most 
diverse congressional delegation in history, and so the State of 
Georgia is now prepared to say goodbye to that diversity.
  I found a book entitled ``The Passion of Claude McKay.'' Claude McKay 
did a poem that I would like to read. The title of the poem is, ``If We 
Must Die.''

       If we must die, let it not be like hogs, hunted and pinned 
     in an inglorious spot. While round us bark the mad and hungry 
     dogs, making their mock at our accursed lot. If we must die, 
     oh, let us nobly die so that our precarious blood may not be 
     shed in vain, then even the monsters we defy shall be 
     constrained to honor us, though dead. Oh, kinsmen, we must 
     meet the common foe. Though far outnumbered, let us show us 
     brave and for their thousand blows deal one death blow, what 
     though before us lies the open grave. Like men will face the 
     murderous, cowardly pack, pressed to the wall, dying, but 
     fighting back.

  Mr. Speaker, I intend to carry this fight for the preservation of 
democracy in America, for as long and as far as we can take it. I would 
like to take this opportunity to thank my colleagues who have all been 
so kind, courteous, concerned, and committed.
  I would like to thank the people from around the country who have 
taken the time to write letters to us, to place telephone calls to our 
office, to share their concern about the evil turn that this country 
has taken, and what it means for average, ordinary Americans, that 
their representation could 

[[Page H 9588]]
be yanked away from them. If it starts with the 11th Congressional 
District of Georgia, and then moves over to the Second Congressional 
District of Georgia, and then sweeps across the South and moves up to 
the North in Illinois and New York, where will it end?

                              {time}  2300

  In fact, we have a very renowned writer in Georgia, Bill Ship, who 
poses the question, ``Are the bad old days back?'' Of course we 
certainly hope not.
  I do not want there to be a statue on the Grounds of the U.S. Capitol 
commemorating the service of the 40 plus African-Americans, the Latino-
Americans, the Asian-Americans who may too very well be expelled if 
this awful page in our history is allowed to be written. I certainly do 
not want another statue on the grounds of the Georgia State Capitol 
commemorating my service in that body and my service in this body and 
my expulsion, either.
  So I guess I would have to say that it all depends now on the will of 
the American people. Do we want to assure that our democracy is one 
that includes everybody, even people like me who do not come from 
wealth, who are not able to finance the tremendous amounts that it 
takes to run campaigns and to try and beat back the block voting that 
occurs in our State, along with the fact that we still have the second 
primary which requires a candidate to win three times when they should 
not really have to win but once.
  I hope the bad old days are not coming back. I know that they will 
not come back if the American people will say enough is enough and that 
what we meant was certainly not this.
  Mr. Speaker, I include the two articles referred to in my special 
order for the Record, as follows:

                   Drowing in a Sea of Misinformation

                         (By Laughlin McDonald)

       The debate over majority-minority voting districts is 
     threatened with death by drowning in a sea of misinformation 
     and speculative assumptions. The hard facts are that the 
     increase in the number of minority elected officials, 
     particularly in the South, is the product of the increase in 
     the number of majority-minority districts and not minorities 
     being elected from majority white districts. And because of 
     the prevalence of white bloc voting, minority populations 
     well above 50% are generally necessary for minorities to have 
     a realistic opportunity to elect candidates of their choice.
       Of the 17 African-Americans elected to Congress in 1992 and 
     1994 from the states of the old Confederacy, all were elected 
     from majority-minority districts. The only black in the 20th 
     century to win a seat in Congress from a majority white 
     district in one of the nine southern states targeted by the 
     special preclearance provisions of the Voting Rights Act was 
     Andrew Young of Georgia. He was elected in the bi-racial 
     afterglow of the civil rights movement in 1972 from the Fifth 
     District where blacks were 44% of the voting age population. 
     Still, voting was racially polarized and he got just 25% of 
     the white vote.
       Those who have claimed that racial bloc voting was a relic 
     of the past in the new South always brought up the example of 
     Andrew Young. His election was proof that a moderate black 
     candidate who knew how to organize a campaign could pile up 
     white votes and win anywhere, they said. Young proved them 
     wrong. In 1981, after serving in Congress for three terms, 
     being ambassador to the United Nations, and raising more 
     money than in previous campaigns, Young got only 9% of the 
     white vote in his election as mayor of majority black 
     Atlanta. In 1990, Young ran for governor of Georgia. In both 
     the primary and runoff he got about a quarter of the white 
     vote, but running statewide where blacks are 27% of the 
     population, he was defeated. Even for a candidate with 
     extraordinary qualifications, such as Young, racial bloc 
     voting is a political fact of life.
       A pattern of office holding similar to that in Congress 
     exists for southern state legislatures. Approximately 90% of 
     all southern black legislators in the 1980s were elected from 
     majority black districts. No blacks were elected from 
     majority white districts in Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, 
     Mississippi, and South Carolina.
       By 1994, there were 262 black state legislators in the 
     southern states, 234 (89%) of whom were elected from majority 
     black districts. Of the 1,495 majority white legislative 
     districts, only 28 (2%) were represented by blacks, a 
     percentage basically unchanged since the 1970s. For blacks to 
     have a realistic change of winning, they have had to run in 
     majority black districts.
       There has also been a substantial increase in the number of 
     minorities elected to city and county offices throughout the 
     South. As with Congress and state legislature, the increase 
     can be traced directly to the creation of majority-minority 
     voting districts.
       It is possible, of course, to conflate the exceptions such 
     as Andrew Young with the general rule, but to do so requires 
     one to rely upon anecdotal evidence and ignore the facts. One 
     scholar has concluded based upon a recent study funded by 
     the National Science Foundation, by far the most 
     comprehensive study to date of the impact of the Voting 
     Rights Act, that ``[t]he arguments that Blacks need not 
     run in `safe' minority districts to be elected, that White 
     voters increasingly support Black politicians, that 
     racial-bloc voting is now unusual--all turn out to be 
     among the great myths currently distorting public 
     discussion.'' \1\
     \1\ Richard Pildes, ``The Politics of Race,'' 108 Harv.L.Rev. 
     1359, 1367 (1995).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
       Numerous decisions of federal courts support these 
     conclusions. To cite just a few, in Burke County, Georgia the 
     court found ``overwhelming evidence of bloc voting along 
     racial lines.'' In Chattanooga, Tennessee black and white 
     voters ``vote differently most of the time.'' In Arkansas 
     voting patterns were described as being ``highly racially 
     polarized.'' In Springfield, Illinois there was ``extreme 
     racially polarized voting.'' In northern Florida voting was 
     not only polarized but was ``driven by racial bias.''
       If whites voted freely for minorities there would be no 
     need to include race in the redistricting calculus, and in 
     places where significant racial bloc voting does not exist 
     the courts have not required the creation of majority-
     minority districts. But because whites generally vote on 
     racial lines, majority-minority districts are necessary to 
     provide minorities the equal opportunity to elect 
     representatives of their choice.
       Some have argued that partisanship, not race, is the 
     determinative factor in elections. Blacks, however, have 
     generally been unable to win in majority white districts no 
     matter whether they were controlled by Democrats or 
     Republicans. The argument also ignores the fact that 
     partisanship is inextricably bound up with race. Much of the 
     political dealignment and realignment that has taken place in 
     this country over the last 30 years has itself been driven by 
     race. Conservative whites have fled the Democratic party for 
     various reasons, but important among them have been the 
     increased participation of blacks in party affairs and the 
     belief that the party was too preoccupied with civil rights.
       Majority-minority districts are not a form of segregation, 
     as some have charged. The majority-minority congressional 
     districts in the South are actually the most racially 
     integrated districts in the country and contain substantial 
     numbers of white voters, an average of 45%. Moreover, blacks 
     in the South continue to be represented more often by white 
     than by black members of Congress, 58% versus 42%. No one who 
     has lived through it could ever confuse existing 
     redistricting plans, with their highly integrated districts, 
     with racial segregation under which blacks were not allowed 
     to vote or run for office.
       While the converse is exceptional, whites are frequently 
     elected from majority-minority districts. During the 1970s 
     whites won in 48% of the majority black legislative districts 
     in the South, and in the 1980s in 27%. In Georgia in 1994 
     whites won in 26% of the majority black legislative 
     districts. Given these levels of white success, racially 
     integrated majority-minority districts cannot be dismissed 
     simply as ``quotas'' or ``set-asides'' for minorities.
       There is also no evidence that the majority-minority 
     districts cause harm or increase racial tension. In Miller v. 
     Johnson (1994) the Supreme Court invalidated Georgia's 
     majority black Eleventh District on the grounds that race was 
     the predominant factor in the redistricting process and the 
     state impermissibly subordinated its traditional 
     redistricting principles to race. The trial court, however, 
     expressly found that the plaintiffs ``suffered no individual 
     harm; the 1992 congressional redistricting plans had no 
     adverse consequences for these white voters.'' The Supreme 
     Court did not disturb these findings.
       Farm from causing harm, the evidence suggests that 
     integrated majority-minority districts have promoted the 
     formation of biracial conditions and actually dampened racial 
     bloc voting. In Mississippi, after the creation of the 
     majority black Second Congressional District, Mike Espy, an 
     African-American, was elected in 1986 with about 11% of the 
     white vote and 52% of the vote overall. In 1988 he won re-
     election with 40% of the white vote and 66% of the vote 
     overall.
       In Georgia, the Second and Eleventh Congressional Districts 
     became majority black for the first time in 1992. From 1984 
     to 1990, only 1% of white voters in the precincts within the 
     Second, and 4% of the white voters in the precincts within 
     the Eleventh, voted for minority candidates in statewide 
     elections. A dramatic and encouraging increase in white 
     crossover voting occurred in 1992. Twenty-nine percent of 
     white voters in the Second and 37% of white voters in the 
     Eleventh voted for minority candidates in statewide elections 
     that year. Whether these trends are temporary or not, they 
     undercut the argument that majority-minority districts have 
     exacerbated racial bloc voting.
       In Miller the Court stopped far short of saying that a 
     jurisdiction couldn't take race into account in redistricting 
     or that it couldn't draw majority-minority districts. Indeed, 
     Justice O'Connor, who was the crucial vote for the five 
     member majority, wrote in a concurring opinion that where a 
     state redistricts in accordance with its ``customary 
     districting principles'' it ``may well'' 

[[Page H 9589]]
     consider race, and that judicial review was limited to ``extreme 
     instances of gerrymandering.'' Such a view is consistent with 
     the Voting Rights Act and the interpretation it has always 
     been given that a jurisdiction must take race into account to 
     avoid diluting minority voting strength.
       As a practical matter it is probably impossible to avoid 
     considering race in redistricting. Members of the Court have 
     frequently observed that one of the purposes of redistricting 
     is to reconcile the competing claims of political, religious, 
     ethnic, racial, and other groups. Legislators necessarily 
     make judgments about how racial and ethnic groups will vote. 
     According to Justice Brennal, ``[I]t would be naive to 
     suppose that racial considerations do not enter into 
     apportionment decisions.''
       Redistricting by its nature is fundamentally different 
     from other forms of governmental action where, for 
     instance, scarce employment or contractual opportunities 
     are allocated on a race conscious basis. A contractor 
     denied the opportunity to bid on 10% of a city's 
     construction contracts, or a white applicant denied the 
     chance to compete for all the openings in a medical school 
     class, have independent claims of entitlement and injury. 
     But a resident who has not been harmed by a redistricting 
     plan has no legitimate grounds for complaint simply 
     because race was one of the factors the legislature took 
     into account.
       Voting districts have traditionally been drawn to 
     accommodate the interests of various racial or ethnic 
     groups--Irish Catholics in San Francisco, Italian-Americans 
     in South Philadelphia, Polish-Americans in Chicago. No court 
     has ever held these districts to be constitutionally suspect 
     or invalid. To apply a different standard in redistricting to 
     African-Americans based upon speculative assumptions about 
     segregation and harm would deny them the recognition given to 
     others. To do so in the name of colorblindness of the 
     Fourteenth Amendment, whose very purpose was to guarantee 
     equal treatment for blacks, would be ironic indeed.
       Integrated majority-minority districts are good for 
     minorities because they provide them equal electoral 
     opportunities. But they are also good for our democracy. They 
     help break down racial isolation and polarization. They help 
     ensure that government is less prone to bias, and is more 
     inclusive, reliable, and legitimate. These are goals that all 
     Americans should support.
                                                                    ____


                     Exploding Redistricting Myths

                         (By Laughlin McDonald)

       After the Supreme Court held Georgia's majority black 
     Eleventh Congressional District unconstitutional as an 
     instance of extreme gerrymandering, the governor called the 
     legislature into special session to repair the damage. But it 
     couldn't agree on a new map and has dumped the matter back 
     into the lap of the federal court. As the court prepares to 
     act, let us reconsider, and reject, two of the myths 
     surrounding majority black districts--that they are 
     unnecessary and that they are part of a Republican/African-
     American cabal that has mortally wounded the Democratic 
     party.
       Because of white bloc voting, minority populations well 
     above 50% are generally necessary for minorities to have a 
     realistic chance to electing candidates of their choice. Of 
     the 17 African-Americans elected to Congress in 1992 and 1994 
     from the states of the old Confederacy, all were elected from 
     majority-minority districts. The only black in this century 
     to win a seat in Congress from a majority white district in 
     one of the nine southern states targeted by the special 
     preclearance provisions of the Voting Rights Act was Andrew 
     Young. He was elected in the biracial afterglow of the civil 
     rights movement in 1972 from the Fifth District where blacks 
     were 44% of the voting age population.
       It is possible to conflate the exceptions such as Young 
     with the rule, but to do so one has to ignore the facts. The 
     notion that racial bloc voting is rare and that minorities 
     have an equal chance in majority white districts in the South 
     is simply a myth that continues to cloud public debate over 
     redistricting.
       The claim that majority-minority congressional districts 
     are the cause of the decline in fortunes of the Democratic 
     party is also largely a bum rap. White Democrats have been 
     elected to Congress from Georgia under the existing plan. 
     Three were elected in 1992, along with three black 
     Democrats. A white Democrat was also elected in 1994, 
     Nathan Deal, but he defected to the Republican party 
     earlier this year.
       Democrats suffered a major reversal in 1992 when a 
     Republican defeated Democratic incumbent Wyche Fowler for the 
     U.S. Senate. Two years later, the state's long time attorney 
     general, a Democrat, left the party and was reelected as a 
     Republican. Neither the statewide election of Republicans nor 
     the defection of Democrats can be laid at the feet of 
     majority black congressional districts.
       Democrats have lost ground in Georgia--statewide, in the 
     U.S. Senate, and in the House--for a lot of reasons, 
     including their failure to deliver on health care and 
     campaign finance reform, not to mention the house banking 
     scandal which helped defeat white Democrat Buddy Darden in 
     1994. But mainly Democrats have been hurt because 
     conservative whites have left the party in growing numbers--a 
     backlash that set in after passage of the major civil rights 
     acts of the 1960s.
       Some observers question whether redrawing congressional 
     district lines in Georgia would do much to reverse Republican 
     gains. It is possible, however, to draw constitutionally 
     acceptable plans that protect the black incumbent and create 
     up to three additional Democratic ``opportunity districts.'' 
     But many white Democrats refused to join with blacks in 
     supporting such plans during the abortive special session, 
     either because they wanted the black incumbents out, they 
     thought the party would damage itself further by seeming to 
     give in to black demands, or they were on the verge of 
     quitting the party themselves. Clearly, some of the party's 
     redistricting wounds are self-inflicted.
       Deconstructing the majority black districts, whatever its 
     partisan impact, would surely bleach the Congress. That might 
     suit some people just fine, but no system that treats blacks 
     as second class voters and denies them the opportunity that 
     others have to elect candidates of their choice, should 
     pretend to be a real democracy.
       Majority-minority districts are not only good for 
     minorities, they are good for the country as a whole. Because 
     they are highly integrated (45% white on average) they help 
     break down racial isolation and encourage biracial coalition 
     building. That has happened in Georgia where white crossover 
     voting increased substantially in the precincts within the 
     Eleventh District after it was created in 1992. Majority-
     minority districts also help insure that government is more 
     inclusive, reliable, and legitimate. These are goals that all 
     Americans should support.

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