[RD] "Race"-based Gerrymandering

[Oerdin]

One of the biggest mistakes in the voting rights act was the legal requirement for nonwhite gerrymandered districts. That is just outright racism.

 

[metalhead]

I don't think you understand what the word "racism" means.

 

[Cassius Critzer]

Well this was certainly an impressive rant!

Are you interested in any kind of actual discussion, or just a bunch of virtual people you can talk your opinions at?

Notice he didn't challenge any of it...because he was unable to do so. By all means try if you can Dear.

 

[metalhead]

Show something resembling a reasonable grasp of the finer points of the topic at hand, and you might have something worth responding to.

As it is, I see little point in responding to an ignorant screed on the topic, particularly when the OP already does a fine job of highlighting some of the actual problems one encounters in trying to strike a balance between ensuring minority populations have electoral representation, and not going too far and "packing" districts unnecessarily.

There are no doubt far better solutions here, such as having more districts, or having larger, multi-rep districts where the reps are chosen by ranked choice voting or some other means. But as we are stuck with the ridiculous system of political gerrymandering, there needs to be some form of protection where applicable.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Gerrymandering is done to fish votes to be the way you want, and race is only one of the factors considered.

Without a much-needed restructure of votes in general (also the only way to destroy the 2 party system in USA) we're not going to see much progress.

 

[Cassius Critzer]

Gerrymandering is Democrats being paternalistic because they think African Americans (scratch that...black urban generic people) are inferior and need to be rescued. This phenomena is often seen in Hollywood productions where a great white savior rescues hapless minorities.

"You poor unfortunates. Mean white people oppressed you but I am enlightened and since you are unorganized, I will rescue you."

Then proceeds to make a huge diplomatic mess with no positive outcome ie Dances With Wolves.

If gerrymandering worked, there would be no ghettos and the African Americans would just be called Americans..just as no one calls someone a German American.

I do not know why leftists who discuss being egalitarian cannot fathom what egalitarian means.

 

[Broken_Erika]

And in republican districts it's used as a way to ensure that republicans stay in power.

 

[Berzerker]

If gerrymandering worked, there would be no ghettos and the African Americans would just be called Americans..just as no one calls someone a German American.

Other immigrants like Germans came relatively long ago, many black people did too but their identity as African-American is recent. Thats why we see so many descendants of slaves adopting African names in place of their slave names. Ghettos were better places to live before the drug war in spite of other policies slowing development.

 

[Cassius Critzer]

I am well aware of the silly history.of multiculturalism. They took a rational idea that all people have ethnic origins, which was designed to stop focusing.on skin color, but went so overboard that now people have even less national identity and are self-segregating. When people of color and ethnic in general like Irish, German, Italian immigrants wanted to preserve cultural history, language, and customs, but be just Americans.

What had happened was they were not first wave immigrants like the Scots and English, and so considered inferior second class poor grasping interlopers.

By 1880, the Native Americans had largely been defeated and there was little new homesteading. Thus any newcomers were not going to get land, but stay in the urban areas, and create new "ghettos" and were considered undesirables.

The others who owned homesteads failed much of the time as they couldn't make it seven years through harsh winters on their own, and returned broke to the urban centers.

Remediating home ownership is the primary way of gaining respectability by economic means And that is how you acquire political power. So that means initially any immigrant organized, got their people elected to minor political positions, but slowly and generationally left to integrate and disburse to lower concentration of ethnicity. Successive generations made gains in education...typically...which increased employment opportunities...which meant living elsewhere due to commutes, but supporting the ethnic hub by investing in cultural events and donating money to political candidates from that area.

Some smart minorities, say Middle Eastern, founded villages which became cities. That was a very brilliant way to have concentration of culture (keep ethnic festivals, maintain spiritual beliefs, have cultural centers for getting married and celebrating milestones), but also control local politics. And perhaps even run for Congress.

In other cases, cities swallowed up these villages and they became healthy ethnic areas, often for tourism.

The worst case is maintaining an impoverished area that is dysfunctional and has always been so. The best solution is to break it up as it is akin to multiple leaks everywhere and not able to patch everywhere.

 

[Berzerker]

People are self-segregating...I dont blame the descendants of slaves for tossing aside that identity, I might do the same. I just dont think African-American is a suitable replacement, Africans were enslaved by Americans. If you're gonna adopt an African name because of that reality, why call yourself American at all? I suppose avoiding confusion is a good enough reason. I suspect a recent Ethiopian arrival wanting to live here would proudly call them self "American", but his ancestors weren't brought here on slave ships.

 

[Cassius Critzer]

Which is why I made the case that a new arriving African has a completely different wish as an outcome as they fled some wartorn place and looking for a home, versus a person whose ancestors were forceably impressed and thus looks upon national identity as an uncertain proposition.

Yet both maintain strong cultural identity, but the former is transferring this. And like their children and grandchildren will have less of that cultural identity as they will think of themselves as Americans. New immigrants will often seek out similar immigrants as spouses. As time goes on, this totally changes and becomes opportunities for marrying other ethnicities.

And no,just because we tried gerrymandering does NOT mean we are stuck with it. If so,then we have failed or had no intention of integration.

And the Republicans during Reconstruction were the ones who got African Americans elected, not the Democrats! The latter didn't take place until after the Civil Rights Act as Democrats obstructed African Americans at every turn with intimidation campaigns to suppress them from voting.

 

[warpus]

Some smart minorities, say Middle Eastern, founded villages which became cities. That was a very brilliant way to have concentration of culture (keep ethnic festivals, maintain spiritual beliefs, have cultural centers for getting married and celebrating milestones), but also control local politics. And perhaps even run for Congress.

Which American city was founded by Middle Eastern immigrants?

I was also told by several Americans now that America is in part so racially segregated due to "redlining"

 

[Berzerker]

Franklin Tennessee, so says the Book of Mormon


I think, got my education from South Park

 

[Cassius Critzer]

Which American city was founded by Middle Eastern immigrants?



I was also told by several Americans now that America is in part so racially segregated due to "redlining"

Start here.
http://www.arabamericanstories.org/arab-americans/history/
http://www.everyculture.com/multi/A-Br/Arab-Americans.html

http://www.everyculture.com/multi/Bu-Dr/Chaldean-Americans.html

http://www.everyculture.com/multi/Le-Pa/Lebanese-Americans.html
http://www.everyculture.com/multi/Du-Ha/Egyptian-Americans.html
Little villages everywhere on the periphery of larger cities, sometimes getting swallowed up, sometimes not.

 

[warpus]

I was just curious if it was a famous city like St. Louis or Chicago or something or something insignificant I would have never heard about

 

[Cassius Critzer]

The founding of a village is not insignificant. There are huge concentrations of all manner of ethnic people in America who used this idea. Why? Because if they stayed in ghettos they knew they were doomed to be an underclass. Greeks, Italians, Irish, mixed Jewish, Chinese, Japanese, etc.

 

[warpus]

Like I said I was just curious if any of the major American cities were indeed founded by Middle Eastern immigrants. Don't really care too much about American villages in this context

 

[Berzerker]

didn't swedes or dutch found nyc?

nm, they aint ME

 

[Ajidica]

If gerrymandering worked, there would be no ghettos and the African Americans would just be called Americans..just as no one calls someone a German American.

You are aware that the term "African-American" was originally a self-descriptor to recognize that black individuals in America have a unique cultural heritage due to over two centuries of social, legal, economic, and political disenfranchisement that simply isn't comparable to the situation faced by German immigrants.

And the Republicans during Reconstruction were the ones who got African Americans elected, not the Democrats! The latter didn't take place until after the Civil Rights Act as Democrats obstructed African Americans at every turn with intimidation campaigns to suppress them from voting.

I'm struggling to see any point you are trying to make here. It is literally high school US History that the Democratic party underwent a major change around 1900 with the inclusion of agrarian and bimetallic interests in opposition to the business/commercial interests that at that point dominated the Republican party. Further shifts occurred with the New Deal and Great Society programs. The seventies had Nixon's "Southern Strategy" and by the 80s the GOP was actively courting the racist vote in the South.

The late, legendarily brutal campaign consultant Lee Atwater explains how Republicans can win the vote of racists without sounding racist themselves:

You start out in 1954 by saying, “******, ******, ******.” By 1968 you can’t say “******”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “******, ******.”

https://www.thenation.com/article/exclusive-lee-atwaters-infamous-1981-interview-southern-strategy/

EDIT: CFC is censoring the quote, but we all know what the six letter word Atwood is using.

 

[Cassius Critzer]

Not only am I aware, I can remember when it began happening. And it didn't happen everywhere but spread slowly. First by activists and leftist intelligensia.

Black pride campaigns began but typically by leftists. Black pastors did not encourage it in general. The local black baptists has meeting halls attached to the church and which were multipurpose and utilized to foster public speaking, raise up leadership, use positive criticism and foster moral behavior by awards, and so forth. They eyed these campaigns as something new and untested and likely to cause backlash. Perhaps in hindsight, a secular challenge to their authority, yet they would be shepherding the ones who might suffer the change.

Recall that during the same period, it was a big deal to be called "black" and not "negro" even worse now cringey "colored" though even incorporating these terms in the United Negro College fund and the NAACP. Now a new term was coming along hyphenating and setting the black citizen from other Americans when only a miniscule number of leftists used similar Hispanic American as a term( possibly with Cesar Chavez?).Asian American wasn't heard commonly for more than a decade. They were appalled and still stinging from Manzinar and the internment camps so that was the last thing they wanted to be: in a seperate category. In fact, the first use there I think in my reading was by the US government when the stated the 442 regiment was manned by "Americans of Japanese descent" because prior they were by and large just called Japanese.

Meanwhile some other groups mockingly said things like, "Well, I am a minority too, Irish American". It was a pretty negative slogan and not really helpful, but became normalized

The Black Panthers and they never bothered changing for example. Many stood up and stated they were "black men" and unsure of nationality since racism was pervasive.