Fyi....
The song that lies silent in the heart of a mother sings upon the lips of her child..
Kahlil Gibran
Rodney D. Coates
Professor
-----Original Message-----
The Decline of the Majority-Black District, and
What It Means
By Aaron Blake
Washington Post
04/20/2011
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/post/the-decline-of-the-majority-black-district-and-what-it-means/2011/04/19/AFTqqACE_blog.html
The last decade hasn't been kind to majority-black
congressional districts across the country.
While the black population nationally ticked up 12
percent in the just-released Census numbers, eight of
the top 10 majority-black districts across the country
actually experienced population loss, losing an average
of more than 10 percent of their black population,
according to a review of Census data by The Fix.
Many of these districts lost voters of other races too,
and are now in need of significant expansion during this
year's redistricting process.
The population loss is really more of a migration. The
black population is moving from the major metropolitan
areas - where most of these districts are - and into the
suburbs. In fact, of the 15 districts with the greatest
black population growth over the last decade, all of
them are in the suburbs of these metro areas.
And that could play right into the hands of a Republican
Party that controls redistricting in an unprecedented
number of states and will be drawing many of these
districts.
"The practical effect is great for the GOP; in state
after state, it's allowing Republicans to pack more
heavily Democratic close-in suburbs into urban black
districts to make surrounding districts more
Republican," said Dave Wasserman of the Cook Political
Report.
In effect, the Voting Rights Act makes it permissible
for Republicans to combine as many black voters - the
most reliable Democratic voting bloc in the country -
into some of the most creatively drawn districts in the
country. This is known as "packing," and while it makes
for a series of very safe Democratic districts, it also
takes Democratic voters out of neighboring districts -
making them easier for Republicans to win. ("Packing" is
a form of gerrymandering - the process of benefitting
politically by drawing districts that are often oddly
shaped.)
The migration is staggering in many areas.
Detroit Democratic Reps. John Conyers and Hansen Clarke,
for instance, lost nearly one-quarter of the 800,000
black voters their districts had in 2000. But Rep.
Sander Levin's (D) neighboring suburban district took in
many of those voters, gaining the ninth-most black
voters in the country. Nearby Reps. Thad McCotter (R-
Mich.) and Gary Peters (D-Mich.) also saw their district
pick up tens of thousands of African-Americans.
Ditto Washington, D.C., which saw its black population
plummet 11 percent over the last decade, while suburban
D.C. Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) gained more black voters
than anyone outside of the fast-growing Atlanta area.
(Fellow Maryland Democrats Donna Edwards and Chris Van
Hollen also gained lots of black voters.)
The effect of all this movement is that the black
population is significantly more dispersed than it was a
decade ago - even as the Voting Rights Act continues to
require black-majority districts not be diluted during
the redistricting process.
In other words, significant line changes will have to be
made to keep these districts as heavily black as they
were for the last decade.
The most extreme case is in Louisiana, which became the
first state to complete its congressional map this
month.
Outmigration from Hurricane Katrina dispersed black
voters from New Orleans all over Louisiana (and also
into Texas and Mississippi). So while Rep. Cedric
Richmond's (D-La.) New Orleans district lost more black
voters than any other district in the country - nearly
120,000 - all the states' others districts gained black
voters. That meant his district needed to be stretched
to Baton Rouge in order to pick up black voters and keep
a semblance of its old black majority.
Of course, in the process, the five Republican-held
seats in Louisiana got very safe for the GOP. A vote
analysis from the liberal-leaning Swing State Project
shows Richmond's district would have gone 73 percent for
President Obama, while Obama wouldn't top 40 percent in
any of the state's other five districts.
And that reality exposes the potential political peril
for Democrats in the Voting Rights Act.
While hailed as an advance in civil rights that has
helped many African-American politicians get to
Congress, many experts and political observers
acknowledge the long-term effects of the VRA have been
good for Republicans, not Democrats.
Given the population losses in many of the country's
majority-black districts, and the fact that Republicans
control redistricting in so many states, we can wager a
guess that these majority-black districts will remain
intact and possibly even add black population.
And the more gerrymandering, the better for Republicans.
The expanding of Clarke's and Conyers' districts, for
example, could help Michigan Republicans eliminate a
Democratic district in the Detroit area (possibly
Peters'). The same goes in Ohio, where Rep. Marcia
Fudge's (D) loss of 29,000 black voters means her
district will have to grow and Republicans can more
easily collapse some nearby Democratic districts.
There is also room for the GOP to create some new black-
majority districts - something they may very well try to
do. If they make Rep. Sanford Bishop's (D-Ga.) district
majority-black, it could help keep freshman Rep. Austin
Scott (R-Ga.) safe by taking Democrats out of his
neighboring district. And Republicans could push
Philadelphia Rep. Bob Brady (D-Pa.), a white Democrat,
into a majority black seat, a move that might help them
shore up all the suburban seats they hold nearby. (Both
Brady's and Bishop's current districts were over 48
percent black in the Census.)
Hilary Shelton, the Washington bureau director for the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People (NAACP), said his organization is prepared to
fight the over-packing of majority-black districts and
hopes that Republicans won't overplay their hand.
"On one hand, we like to see cohesiveness of those who
share common values," Shelton said. "But it is important
that we don't end up with the kind of packing in
districts that actually" diminishes the influence of
black voters.
The NAACP fought Texas's mid-cycle redistricting plan
very much on these grounds, and observers say there is
growing evidence that black districts with super-
majorities over-concentrate the black vote.
Some even contend that the Voting Rights Act has
outlived its usefulness in this regard, as black
politicians have made gains and regularly get elected
even in majority-white districts. A pair of black
Republicans even won in 2010.
But while the African-American population has been
shrinking in many of these majority-black districts in
recent years, the number of majority-black districts has
actually increased over the last decade and could very
well continue to with Republicans leading the
redistricting process.
But while the expansion of these majority-black
districts in 2010 might be a good thing in the short-
term for the GOP, the minority populations are still
growing much faster than the white population -
especially Hispanics. And given the GOP's struggles with
minority voters, they may very well have a long-term
problem.
"Without question, the last election came at a perfect
time for Republicans in terms of taking control of a lot
of state legislatures that they hadn't before," said
David Bositis, an expert on race and politics at the
Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. "But
the underlying fact is that, if you look at population
growth of the U.S. over last 10 years, almost all of the
growth came in minority communities."
In the meantime, there could very well be battles over
just how many black voters must be put in these
majority-black districts.
And with a Democratic-led Justice Department for the
first time since the Voting Rights Act passed, those
battles could be more pitched than they have been in the
past.
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