Posted on 06/04/2011 7:02:26 PM PDT by BuckeyeTexan
WASHINGTON -- I won't procrastinate; I'll get the most difficult part of this column over right now: I was wrong. I was shortsighted, naive and narrow-minded to endorse the concept of drawing congressional districts to take racial demographics into account.
In 1982, the Voting Rights Act, with its emphasis on Southern states, was amended to encourage the creation of awkwardly named "majority-minority" districts in order to give black voters the strength of a bloc. I believed that drawing such districts was a progressive political tactic, a benign form of affirmative action that would usher more black members into a Congress that had admitted only a handful.
The tactic worked. In 1980, there were only 18 blacks in the U.S. House of Representatives. Now, there are 44, many of them elected from districts drawn to meet the mandates of the Voting Rights Act.
Unfortunately -- like so many measures designed to provide redress for historic wrongs -- those racially gerrymandered districts also come with a significant downside: They discourage moderation. Politicians seeking office in majority-black or -brown districts found that they could indulge in crude racial gamesmanship and left-wing histrionics.
Hemming most black voters into a few districts also had a deleterious effect on surrounding areas, now "bleached" of voters whose interests tend toward equality of opportunity. Their absence encourages pols in districts left overwhelmingly white to use the "Southern strategy" of playing to the resentments of white voters still uncomfortable with decades of social change.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Sounds like Cynthia is embarrassed by the likes of Sheila Jackson Lee, Barbara Lee, John Conyers, etc. etc. Affirmative action always produces inferior results, our current president being Exhibit A.
Cynthia Tucker says “I was wrong.”
She should say the same in every single column she ever writes.
If only they realize sooner that every policy has unintended consequences. Some of them work against the very cause they try to accomplish with the policy.
So what does Cynthia want? Districts that are gerrymandered to be 60% or more Dem registration, like here in the Southern California locality where I live? The Marxists in Sacramento didn’t gerrymander by race so much as by voter registration. That’s why they’ve dominated the legislature here for so long.
Yep. That John Lewis guy is as honest as the day is long; as he proved last March when all those Tea Partiers were shouting the n-word at him 15 times.
Not bad, Cynthia: it only took you 30 years to get to what the rest of us have known for, well, at least 30 years!
Your stupidity and narrow-mindedness have never stopped you from rendering your opinions, though, have they?
:)
Gerrymandered districts truly are an abomination. Any thinking person should oppose them on principle. The fact that they have resulted in a bevy of corrupt, racist morons in congress is just part of the problem. Still, it’s hilarious how this dumb Democratic idea insures that a good percentage of the Dem caucus consists of crooks, and has resulted in a natural Republican majority in congress.
John Lewis is my Representative and he hasn’t done anything for the past 25 years he’s been in Congress. I don’t have any representation in Congress.
No, Cynthia. Black voters would have more influence if they stopped voting 90% Democrat, putting all their eggs in one basket, and that happens to be the non-majority party.
Sorry. I got you beat. Mine is Keith Ellison, who just was reelected with over a 40% margin in a hugely Republican year.
You get James Clyburn, we get a Republican state, not a bad deal in SC.
That ain't news. Well, maybe to Tucker it is.
Let me guess, she wants a do-over now that she realized she is an idiot. That ain't news either.
We don't want those freaking liberal retards in our districts!
Democrats are VERY lucky their power base is in the Northeast where the states are very small, and thus get 2 senators for an area not much larger than a large city in the south. Nearly the whole northeast should be turned into ONE large state with only 2 liberal senators, THAT would fix a lot of stuff.
Move....
I just love that idea!
I’ve got you BOTH beat.
Mine’s Elijah Cummings (D-Murdermore).
You reaps what you sows, you racist.
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