Race and Voting

AuthorChandler Davidson
Pages2093-2094

Page 2093

Controversies over race and voting stem from the fact that citizens belong to racial and ethnic groups with different and often conflicting interests, and as group members they tend to vote for candidates representing those interests. What should be done when their group's preferred candidates are consistently prevented from winning election?

The question became urgent after passage of the VOTING RIGHTS ACT OF 1965. In the South, most newly enfranchised blacks were unable to elect black candidates. Racially polarized voting was the main culprit: In electoral venues where whites outnumbered blacks?and in the 1960s this was almost always the case?white votes overwhelmed black ones.

The paucity of majority-black venues resulted primarily from racial GERRYMANDERING; white legislators refused to draw majority-black districts in single-member-district systems or adopted majority-white multimember-district ("at-large") systems. Suits by black and other minority voters?particularly Hispanics?attacked racial gerrymandering as illegal efforts to dilute minority voting strength. On this theory, the FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT guarantees racial minorities the opportunity to participate equally in the political process by electing candidates of their choice, and the guarantee is abridged by ELECTORAL DISTRICTING that denies minorities this opportunity. The Supreme Court adopted the theory in White v. Regester (1973), and Congress in 1982 then added vote-dilution protection to groups covered by the Voting Rights Act. Thornburg v. Gingles (1986) simplified the criteria for proving dilution, and the U.S. Department of Justice, charged with administering the Voting Rights Act, required states redistricting after the 1990 Census to draw majority-minority districts whenever feasible. Consequently, from the middle 1970s to the early 1990s the number of black and Hispanic officials in the South and Southwest, respectively, increased sharply.

This trend was reversed in the mid-1990s. In SHAW V. RENO (1993), white plaintiffs in North Carolina, a state that is 22 percent black, challenged aspects of the 1990s REAPPORTIONMENT, which had resulted in the election of the first two African American members of Congress from that state since RECONSTRUCTION. The plaintiffs claimed that the shape of one of the safe black districts was "so extremely irregular on its face that it rationally can be viewed only as an effort to segregate the races for...

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