Breaking Up All-Minority Legislative Districts May Be a Good Thing

For more than half a century, America has operated under the assumption that creating all-minority legislative districts was a good thing – that it addressed social and institutional racial prejudices. The concept was well intended on the surface, and it may have served a good purpose at the outset.

As I pointed out in my book, Who Put Blacks in THAT Place: The Long, Sad History of the Democratic Party’s Oppression of Black Americans … To this day, big city Democrat political machines use minority consolidation to limit minority representation and political power. The scheme is simple. In an area in which two districts could be drawn with a majority/minority population – say 60 percent in each district – essentially creating two minority legislative seats. If they draw a district with a 100 percent minority population and distribute the remaining minority voters among a few mostly White districts. Voila! Only one minority legislator.

I experienced that in the old Chicago 4th Congressional District that took the shape of a set of earphones that ran from the north side to the south side. The purpose of the ridiculously gerrymandered design was to concentrate Hispanics into one district. Had they drawn a north side and a south side district, they likely would have produced two Hispanic members of Congress.

There was another dark motive behind packing minorities into 100 percent districts. It gave the Democrat machine enormous power over the highly concentrated population – and the vote. It was racist districting – from congressional seats to school boundaries – that created and maintained the ghettoes.

It is no coincidence that minority-packed districts are characterized by poor quality education, high unemployment, high crime, a high number of welfare recipients, crumbling infrastructure, high rates of family breakdown, and persistent social dysfunction.

Districting has been – and still is – the foundation of institutional racism in America’s Democrat-controlled cities. In a very real sense, the segregated communities are islands of pseudo socialism surrounded by America’s free market capitalistic opportunity society. And the institutional de facto segregation has prevented the minority populations – especially Blacks – from integrating and assimilating.

And THAT is why breaking up minority districts may be beneficial in the long run.

The first question is whether all-minority districts are good things. The question deals with the very concept. Should any group in America be privileged with a district based on ethnicity – or any other identifier? If Black Americans are entitled to a piece of political geography, why would not that concept apply to others? Chicago has a large Polish population. Should there be a Polska congressional district? Should we draw Jewish districts? Looking at the issue from that perspective, the concept seems downright un-American.

Of course, for that to happen Poles and Jews would have to concentrate among themselves to create the majority districts. That is contrary to integration and assimilation … E Pluribus Unum and the Melting Pot (of which I am a 100 percent advocate). And that is exactly what concentrated all-minority districts do. Blacks – and to a lesser extent Latinos – live in poverty ravaged ghettoes because of districting – enforced by districting.

One needs to know that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 – and the creation of racially gerrymandered all Black or all Latino districts — was meant as a temporary measure to address blatant racism – particularly in the South. The recent decision by the Supreme Court – throwing out Louisiana’s all Black racially drawn congressional district – is nothing new. In cases such as Shaw v. Reno (1993) or Allen v. Milligan (2023) the high court showed judicial skepticism of extreme racial districting.

Eliminating all-Black districts does not mean that Blacks would fail to be elected to office. History has shown that Black candidates can win from districts with White majorities – just as Jews and Poles get elected to office from districts in which they represent a minority of the population.

Many Black officeholders have been elected from a jurisdiction with a White majority. And history provides many examples. Senators Edward Brooke (MA), Barack Obama (IL), Raphael Warnock (GA), Carol Moseley Braun (IL), Tim Scott (SC), Cory Booker (NJ), Angela Alsobrooks (MD), and Lisa Blunt Rochester (DE) were all elected from states with non-Black majorities.

The same holds with the U.S. House. Of the approximately 60 Black members of the House, half were elected from districts with non-Black majorities, according to Axios Analysis. That includes Ayanna Pressley (MA-7), Jahana Hayes (CT-5), Colin Allred (TX-32), Antonio Delgado (NY-19), Janelle Bynum (OR-5) and the list goes on. Some have been elected from districts with a White majority over 75 percent.

The same trend can be found in state legislatures – and even school and other special government districts. Importantly, the list crosses party lines and represents every major region in America.

We have had ethnic conclaves in the past from which ethnic candidates rose. An example in Chicago was the First Ward/Taylor Street area initially settled by Italians. And for a time, the people of that area elected Italians to office. But those immigration-based settlements gradually gave way to integration, assimilation and gentrification. They were not created as permanent environments by law, edict, politics and institutional racism. They naturally formed and naturally dissolved.

Lots of media attention has been paid to redistricting in Tennessee. The Volunteer State currently has 10 congressional seats – nine Republican and one Democrat. The new map would potentially eliminate the one Black designated district. But it is entirely possible that a Black candidate could win one or even two seats. But … such a candidate is more likely to be a Black Republican because it is a solid red state – and that is what has Democrats in such a tizzy.

Just as we should not judge a person by the color of his or her skin as opposed to the quality of his or her character – as Martin Luther King Jr. so eloquently put it – we should not rig the system so that a category of persons gets elected primarily based on … the color of their skin.

While politics will always play a role in redistricting. But the American system of elections would be well served to return to the basic stipulation that districts be “continuous and concise.” Gerrymandering for or against a demographic group is simply wrong – and according to the Supreme Court, it is unconstitutional.

So, there ‘tis.