“Republicans have worked to maximize black congressional representation by creating black-majority congressional districts.”
Bull. Its called gerrymandering and it was never done to “maximize black congressional representation”. Say you have 4 congressional districts with blacks comprising a large minority in each district. In order to avoid having to answer to this minority constituency in each district, the politicos redefine the districts so that they have one solid black district and 3 solid white districts. 3 votes to 1 beats 4 maybe votes in any legislature. Same goes for electoral politics. 3 solid white votes out of 4 beats 4 votes that have to appeal to black issues come election time in any election. Its not just a race based strategy though. Anytime you know the voting patterns of a given area, you can redefine the districts so you “maximize” the amount of districts that vote in your party’s favor. Both parties do this but to say that anyone has ever done this to “maximise black congressional representation” is selling you a load of crap.
The effect, of course, to do this. The natural result of concentrating people of a certain type in a district is to produce congressmen with the same background. Historically, Catholic congressmen come from Catholic districts; ditto, Mormons and Jews. Generally, the representative is representative of the voters.