Voting wrongs - racial reapportionment

In a suburban Atlanta district where a freshman Republican narrowly won, blacks were cut away to boost minority percentages in the huge majority-black 11th Congressional District, which picks up voters in three different cities from Atlanta to Savannah-kind of a second Sherman's march. In middle Georgia, the requirement for a majority-black district cost a white incumbent his political base, helping elect a freshman Republican in his place. The Democrats rightly feared that removing key blocs of minority voters from majority-white districts would put Democrats at risk.

Those white Democrats who did win are decidedly centrist, even conservative. Michael Thurmond, a state representative who was head of the Legislative Black Caucus during reapportionment, opposed the final plan, believing it put race ahead of a traditional liberal agenda. "That's what people haven't seen yet," says Thurmond. "The question is, did we really win? The only whites that can get elected are very conservative, whether Democrat or Republican. Consequently, while you get more minorities elected, you get fewer progressive votes in the delegation as a whole." That's one of the critical consequences of racial redistricting: Will minority representatives become lonely voices for traditionally liberal causes now that neighboring representatives have so little political stake in explicitly racial issues? What happened in Georgia's delegation could happen elsewhere.

At bottom, politics ought to be about building consensus and offering legitimate choices. That's not happening now in either of the major parties. "There are more and more Democrats who know that the Clinton strategy will work," says Bositis of the Joint Center. "As long as you don't mind killing a few black men on death row or insulting Sister Souljah or appearing to have a tiff with Jesse Jackson, you'll do well, and you'll get the black vote anyway." It doesn't help that the 1982 amendment makes race a prerequisite in some elections. Civil fights supporters argue that participation in government is necessary to bringing minorities into the political mainstream.

But neither party accepted that fundamental premise during reapportionment. It instead was a matter of playing strategic games to maximize partisan advantage.

"The most egregious maps, the ones that make you intuitively say something's wrong with this, were drawn by Democrats trying to hold on to what they had," says Ben Ginsberg, the RNC's chief counsel and principal enforcer of the Voting Rights Act strategy. In many states, the facts bear Ginsberg out. The problem is that criticism comes from a party that opposes preferential policies in hiring, contracting, and all other arenas of political life. Voting rights seem to be a different thing entirely.

From 1990 to 1992, the first year under the new congressional map, the percentage of blacks represented by Republicans in Congress dropped. In North Carolina, for instance, the average in 1990 was 15 percent; now, of the four districts held by Republicans, the black population makes up an average of 5.7 percent. In Democratic districts that aren't majority-minority, the average hovers from 20 to 25 percent. Nationally, according to Election Data Services, districts held by Republicans in 1990 were 6.84 percent black; in 1993, the average is 5.56 percent.