Federally sanctioned segregation,,,,,,,,

[Tigermike 3,427]

Segregated now, segregated tomorrow, segregated forever?

Published: Sunday, February 12, 2012, 5:58 AM

By John Archibald

The Birmingham News

It used to be simple.

Cut and dried. Plain and simple. Black and white.

Separate water fountains for black people? You betcha. Blacks in the back of the bus? That's the ticket. You take your schools, we'll take ours, and everybody knows their place.

Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.

It was easy, when it was all up in your face like that, to recognize the racism.

We don't have it so easy anymore.

Because conscience and convention caught up to us. The Voting Rights Act, paving the way to our hell with its good intentions, taught us what's what. Now, in this enlightened age, we do things differently.

Now our segregation is federally sanctioned. Which means, for the foreseeable future, it is all but assured. Politically, anyway.

Because we have gerrymandered ourselves into a corner. Even the way we elect our congressional representatives divides us and derides us. It separates us by race and party, class and caste. It assures our politicians preach only to the choirs who elected them.

That is to say, they cater only to those just like them.

Alabama's 6th Congressional District contains most of Birmingham's affluent suburbs, but not Birmingham itself. It is 85 percent white and largely Republican, with a median household income of $58,000. It doesn't represent the Birmingham area. Just half of it. No black person, no Democrat can win there.

The 7th Congressional District, on the other hand, stretches across the rural Black Belt and into Jefferson County. It snakes through the middle of the county, taking much of Bessemer and Fairfield and Birmingham -- as if they have anything is common with the rural counties to the south. It is 63 percent black, with a median income of $32,000. It was designed to ensure a black face in Congress. And that's what it does.

But it also ensures Alabama blacks will have no real power in Congress. Even in the metro area they call home, they have little representation, and no real consideration.

It can't possibly be good for this thing we call ... democracy.

Former Congressman Artur Davis, a black man elected in the 7th District, knows the pitfalls of the system. He said modern interpretations of the Voting Rights Act -- which spawned racially gerrymandered districts -- presume that race is the only dominant political interest in the South. That "has become a self-fulfilling prophesy," he said.

Davis says such districting has "pushed black politics in a shriller, more partisan direction." But of course it has had the same effect on the other side of the aisle.

When black Democrats must only please black Democrats, and when white Republicans must only please white Republicans, there is no motivation for even the pretense of common ground.

So our divide just grows wider. Not just across Alabama, but across the nation.

We are split racially, economically, socially, politically, and perhaps most important, intellectually.

Segregated now, tomorrow, and apparently forever. All with the blessing of the federal government.

You wonder why people sit back and complain that Congress can never find common ground?

It is because Congress reflects us perfectly.

Perhaps that is why we despise them so.

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[cptau 169]

This racial gerrymandering is also political gerrymandering. It has helped make the democrate party a weak party at the state level in most southern states. The other districts tend to be republican because of this.

[Justin5 20]

Can't Alabama just draw better lines? Seems like this is on the State, not the Fed.

[bigsixfive 336]

This racial gerrymandering is also political gerrymandering. It has helped make the democrate party a weak party at the state level in most southern states. The other districts tend to be republican because of this.

Yup, it's those crazy Republicans hijacking control.

However by 1874 the Democratic party had re-established itself in Alabama, and a series of redistrictings and then punitive race laws ensured that no Republicans remained congressmen after 1877.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alabama's_congressional_districts

Democrats have controlled the state legislature in Alabama since 1874. Republicans finally gained a majority in 2010.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_party_strength_in_Alabama

[Tigermike 3,427]

Can't Alabama just draw better lines? Seems like this is on the State, not the Fed.

And other states are not just as bad?

As for this article, Archibald writes about Birmingham & Alabama.

[cptau 169]

Can't Alabama just draw better lines? Seems like this is on the State, not the Fed.

The state legislature draws the district lines based on the US Census results, then the Federal Government under the Voting Rights Act reviews and approves or disapproves for each state. And dramatic change gets lots of attention and federal court challenges.

Linking a district that runs from north Birmingham to just north of mobile bay is amazing, but that is what the Feds want.

[au2004ece 30]

Can't Alabama just draw better lines? Seems like this is on the State, not the Fed.

If the lines spread out minorities evenly, then they would be in violation of how the courts have interpreted the Voting Rights Act. The Voting Rights Act has been interpreted to mean that the election of a few minority candidates must be guaranteed by the majority minority districts.

This is what I was talking about in the thread that RunInRed started about the North Carolina districts.