Exploiting
Perfect. The Supreme Court says yay racial gerrymandering; let the fun begin.
The Supreme Court handed down a 6-3 decision along party lines on Thursday, which represented its fullest endorsement of partisan gerrymandering to date.
In the past, legal restrictions on racial gerrymandering — maps drawn to minimize the voting power of a particular racial group, rather than the power of a political party — had the side effect of also limiting attempts to draw maps that benefitted one party or another. While the Court largely tolerated gerrymanders that were designed to lock one party into power, those maps sometimes failed because they also targeted racial minorities.
Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion in Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP, however, is written explicitly to permit political parties to draw rigged maps, even when those maps maximize the power of white voters and minimize the power of voters of color. Indeed, Alito says that one of the purposes of his opinion is to prevent litigants from “repackag[ing] a partisan-gerrymandering claim as a racial-gerrymandering claim by exploiting the tight link between race and political preference.”
Exploiting it, he says. Exploiting the ugly fact that one of the two major political parties is friendly to racial gerrymandering.
Alexander achieves another one of Alito’s longtime goals. Alito frequently disdains any allegation that a white lawmaker might have been motivated by racism, and he’s long sought to write a presumption of white racial innocence into the law. His dismissive attitude toward any allegation that racism might exist in American government is on full display in his opinion. “When a federal court finds that race drove a legislature’s districting decisions, it is declaring that the legislature engaged in ‘offensive and demeaning conduct,’” Alito writes, before proclaiming that “we should not be quick to hurl such accusations at the political branches.”
Except the ones that try to avoid racist gerrymandering of course.
It’s not a prima facie unreasonable argument. A map drawn for purely partisan purposes could have the same contours as one drawn for purely racial purposes. The reverse is also true. Therefore, we can’t with certainty infer motivation from effect. This is fairly anodyne.
The interesting question is what we do with that fact. Do we permit or prohibit all gerrymandering? Do we treat all gerrymandering claims as partisan or racial? Do we find instead some middle ground or some other paradigm entirely?
Well he has a black best friend so it’s fine…
Nullius, I propose we do what they do in Iowa. All states should have special committees that are non-partisan to draw out the voting districts. That way you can remove the partisan manuevering, and with it, hopefully the racial profiling. IMHO, the committees should be representative of the state; percentages of women, men, people of color, etc. I don’t think Iowa does that, I think it’s just non-partisan.
It really isn’t a difficult solution. The wrong question here is whether it is racial or partisan; it’s why are we allowing gerrymandering at all? Why is the legislature allowed to draw legislative districts?
Coming from a country where (most) of our politicians believe that voting should be fair, easy, and representative that’s a really strange question to even contemplate.
Where’s John Brown when you need him?
I learned about John Brown from OverSimplified
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWWRRsHy6o8
I miss that channel, seems they stopped making videos. Actually I probably had heard of JB before, but I sure hadn’t heard about the badass bonkers stuff.
But what if it’s part of a pattern that disprportionately and deliberately targets Black voters? ID restrictions, fewer polling places, etc. And what do we do when the “offensive and demeaning” conduct is coming from the judicial branches?
“A map drawn for purely partisan purposes could have the same contours as one drawn for purely racial purposes. The reverse is also true. Therefore, we can’t with certainty infer motivation from effect.”
I am sorry to sound rude, but so what? In many places in the USA , there is no practical difference between gerrymandering for political ends and gerrymandering for racist (I prefer the word to ‘racial’ in this context) ends. Surely most such gerrymandering is done for both political & racist reasons. Since ‘to gerrymander’ has the meaning of manipulating the boundaries of constituencies to gain unfair political advantage (which means disadvantaging some particular group), I do not understand your resort to what comes across as meaningless quibbling.
Tim: You seem to be saying that if gerrymandering’s effects are invariant with respect to motivation, then we can infer that both partisan and racial motivations are at work in any given gerrymandering claim.
We distinguish many things by motivation only. Such things necessarily have motivation-invariant consequences, and yet we recognize that in any particular case, no particular motivation is sure to be present. Accepting your argument would erase all such distinctions. I find this prospect unattractive and must, with respect, reject your argument.
Now, if you instead want to argue that we shouldn’t distinguish between motivations in the case of gerrymandering, that’s a supportable position.
Sorry, I find your quibbling irrelevant in the light of what gerrymandering is defined as being. I suggest you re-read what I said carefully and try to avoid imposing interpretations and equivocations of your own making.
Really? Really?
Tim, I engaged with what you wrote as charitably and respectfully as I could, yet you snidely accuse me of quibbling, of misinterpretation and equivocation. Where have I imposed an interpretation? Where have I equivocated?
I could very easily say that you have imposed an interpretation on me, as I suspect you’re under the impression that I’m somehow arguing in defense of gerrymandering and Alito’s opinion. That’s the only way I can make sense of your phrasing when you say that I “resort to what comes across as meaningless quibbling.” After all, why would I resort to anything except in flailing defense of the indefensible? How else am I supposed to interpret your enthymeme?
I’d prefer to keep things cordial, but there’s a limit to the passive aggressive condescension I’m willing to ignore.
NiV, take some deep breaths.
Your initial comment was in fact a digression, which annoyed me a bit, but I kept quiet. But Tim’s “so what?” is what I could have said if I hadn’t kept quiet. Surely you realize that Alito isn’t making a purely philosophical point here.
You could tell us that his argument is invalid without quite so much technical language.
I was deputy editor of The Philosopher’s Magazine for several years, and one of my main imperatives was to edit out all technical language. They didn’t want professional vocabulary; they wanted it to be ordinary language. There are good reasons for that choice.
Sorry, Ophelia. Deep breaths taken.
For what it’s worth, I didn’t mind the “so what”. “So what” is a legit question, which is why I tried to answer to the best of my ability. In fact, I would’ve preferred that you hadn’t swallowed your own “so what”! Your “so what” is always welcome, because it always feels like you’re trying to draw more of whoever you’re talking to.
And almost to prove my point, yes, Alito’s definitely not making a purely philosophical move. He’s being rhetorically disingenuous, because the banal fact of our inability to discern with certainly the motivation for a given map says nothing about what we should do about either partisan or racial gerrymandering. It’s an irrelevancy, meant to slip by without inspection because it’s so inoffensive. It’s that very anodyne nature that makes it rhetorically effective as a springboard to a bogus conclusion. We find it easy to reject arguments where the (stated) premises are unsound, but our guard goes down when it’s the logical form that’s fallacious.
That’s why I dismissively called it an anodyne point and said that what’s interesting comes after. I was basically asking Alito, “So what?”
Please don’t hold back your “so what”s in the future, Ophelia. They kinda make me happy.
THERE you go, that’s the demotic language we can all understand!
As for “so what” I think I will go for the Yes Minister irregular verbs approach.
How have I never encountered “demotic” until now? Always learning new things here, I swear.
And (sort of) an irregular noun from 1776:
Do let me know if I’m ever veering too far into technical jargon. I have a hard time finding the sweet spot between precision and accessibility.
Oh “demotic” is an excellent word.
When in doubt about technical language you can always add a demotic translation in brackets rather than forgoing the technical word.