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 ...
See you don’t get it...liberal want their cake and eat it too...They want both sides of the argument. Facts be daymned...I always tell black folks that playing racial and identity politics are a losing game, but they arent quite ready for it.
Lets not forget the posteridiot Hank Johnson.
Vote with your feet.
Every "identity politics" group needs to learn this lesson. If they can count on your vote you have no power over them.
Exactly.
Just to pick a random state with 2 Republican Senators, I looked at Arizona’s total population and area vs the NE. Compared to the following list, Arizona has 238,000 more people and 94,000 more square miles than:
Vermont
Delaware
Rhode Island
Connecticut
Those four states have 9 Congressmen compared to 8 for Arizona (9 in 2013) despite having fewer people by 1/3 of a Congressman. In the Senate, those 4 states have 8 Democrats compared to Arizona’s 2. So, despite having more people and more land area, the NE states have 1 more Congressman and 6 more Senators, who are all democrats.
This is what happens when you play racial identity politics and you are only about 10% of the population. You lose.
You elect idiots that only run on race, inflaming everyone with their race pimping so they get re-elected over and over. So of course the natural reaction is to give a double fistful to you fool suckas chased with a garden hose cocktail to wash it down.
So buy yourself a cup of STFU already Miss Cynthia. You did this to yourself.
She's wrong in demagoguing Republicans, however. I don't see how "ultraconservatives" are appropriately depicted as battle flag and kenyan-born Obama conspiracy types.
How conveeeeeenient.
"Moderation", she says. That's kinda like Nancy Pelosi being interested in "bipartisanship", right after the Dims get their @$$es kicked at the ballot box.
What the hell can anyone expect from the idiot that “suggested” America air-drop SPAM over Iraq as aid?
“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.”
The current president being Exhibit B or C. Exhibit A has been the utter destruction of the Black family and with it the underpinnings of Black Civilization.
To be quite honest I wonder if true racist like LBJ were actually trying to accomplish just this with their “Civil rights” acts. If it was not to destroy black civilization it was to put as many blacks as possible back on the Slave plantation. This plantation not run by a private individual or family but by a Big overbearing Nanny Government.
CBC even embarasses the left.
You should see what the Voting Rights Act is doing in Michigan.
We lost a seat because of the 10+ year long recession. Detroit lost 25% of it’s population, but because of the VRA it will retain control of two seats. Conyers and Hanson Clarke will keep their “protected” status and the new districts are horribly gerrymandered. One proposal has a geographical “finger” snaking out of Detroit to snag Pontiac.
If there’s a benefit, it forces Sander Levin and Gary Peters into a primary against each other.
If only Blacks weren’t so racist and would vote for White Republicans at least some of the time, I could listen to you Cynthia, but since that isn’t happening any time soon go pound sand.
“What’d that cost him?”
Trust me—Tucker is embarrassed by no one(except for maybe mckinney) and if the dems were still in control while redistricting is happening, she’d still be for gerrymandering more and bigger black districts.
“Lets not forget the posteridiot Hank Johnson.”
Unfortunately, I got to claim that dimwit.
You can have fun with hank by posting all the stupid crap that comes out of his mouth but you may have to start your own blog with the spouting from that idiot.
Almost - I thought to myself when I started reading this article, this is Cynthia Tucker? Is it even possible? She was sooooooo close! -
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.
But alas, she takes her new-found revelation and gets it exactly wrong -
What do Republicans get out of the deal? With most black voters pushed into one or two districts, they have rid surrounding districts of voters who might shun a politician who claims allegiance to the Rebel flag or who insists that President Barack Obama is a foreigner. In other words, they make neighboring districts safe for ultraconservative Republicans.
It's like watching a small child trying to learn how to ride a bike and never figuring out how not to fall. When it's your kid it's heartbreaking, when it's somebody else's, it's just plain funny.
What, it took you 29 years to figure this out? When Dick Nixon had it figured out a dozen years before that?
Politicians seeking office in majority-black or -brown districts found that they could indulge in crude racial gamesmanship and left-wing histrionics.
Whaaaaat??!! Noooooo!!! When did that happen?
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Now she's sorry! Now that her ox is getting gored ..... feh.
Yeah, I noticed that she conspicuously fails to renounce the illicit, deal-busting, poisoned-candy benefits of bloc voting.
She wants blacks to go on bloc-voting, only spread their malign political tactics around to more districts in order to shut conservatives out of the national conversation. We're getting to her. Now she's tired of the shiny blue toy, and nothing must do but that she have the red one ..... while keeping the blue one .....
Tinker and adjust the social order and you get results predictable by a real Economist. That is the inevitability Unintended Consequences that most of the time defeat the original purpose of the tinkering.
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