Irony: Racial makeup of districts shouldn't surprise Democrats

It is the ultimate in irony that Democrats are complaining that the district lines drawn for congressional races are too racist.

After all, it was the Democrats, bowing to political pressure from the NAACP, that first created the gerrymandering system now in place.

The first districts were drawn by Democratic lawmakers to create minority-majority districts to ensure the election of black representatives. The same is true of local and state boundary lines -- they were drawn specifically with an eye toward the racial makeup of the population within the districts.

The Democratic complaints began when Republicans gained the upper hand and used the same criterion -- race -- to draw their own district lines.

The argument that the system is racist is true, and it has been from the start. How Democratic lawyers argue that the system is racist with a straight face is beyond us.

When you draw districts so that they contain a majority of minority voters, you necessarily leave other districts to contain a majority of majority voters. Hence, the preponderance of districts made up of mostly white voters who have tended to vote Republican in recent years. Hence, the control of state and local governments by white majorities, from the local board of county commissioners to the state Senate. Their makeup is the result of racist gerrymandering.

All this began about 25 years ago, when the NAACP threatened to sue local and state governments if they did not create districts that gave blacks a majority of voters. Had its leaders looked down the road, they could have easily foreseen what would happen.

Published in Editorials on November 25, 2015 11:40 AM