I wish “Meet the Press” host Kristen Welker had asked Sen. Cory Booker if he is qualified to represent New Jersey, given that nearly 9 in 10 of his constituents are non-Black.
I should probably back off.
Last month, the Supreme Court ruled in Callais v. Louisiana that the state's most recent legislative map was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.
Here is a simplified summary. After the 2020 census, Louisiana drew a congressional map that included only one “majority-minority” district. Some black voters sued, arguing that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 required a second majority-minority district, because one-third of Louisiana's population is black, and one district represented only one-sixth of the state's representation in Congress. A federal judge agreed and ordered the state to redraw the map, or the court would do it for them. Louisiana tried again, producing a majority-black second district.
This sparked a lawsuit from non-black voters, alleging that the new map violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution, because Louisiana had relied too much on race in drawing it. A three-judge federal court agreed. The Supreme Court confirmed that ruling.
The legal problem is that the Voting Rights Act and the Constitution can go in opposite directions. Section 2 requires states to take race into account when illegally diluting minority voters, but in deference to the Constitution, it also prohibits relying too heavily on race to create majority-minority districts.
In short, race can be to factor, but not the primary one. States must take into account “the totality of the circumstances,” including whether minority districts are geographically compact and politically cohesive. States cannot simply draw expansion districts to attack racial targets.
So it's complicated, with two well-intentioned goals in tension, and partisanship, race, and redistricting weighing on the process. I think the court ruled correctly, but I also think Justice Elena Kagan's dissent raised defensible points about the legal text and about the fact that the court substituted its ruling for Congressional intent.
That said, Booker and many similar critics of the decision should be ashamed of themselves.
Booker told Welker on Sunday that the Supreme Court “sent us back in time to the 1870s and 1880s, when Southern and Southern lawmakers, through terrorism, intimidation and worse, were able to prevent African Americans from having representation in Congress.
“This is wrong. It's as bad as Plessy v. Ferguson,” the Supreme Court decision sanctioning Jim Crow, he said. “It's as bad as Korematsu [which upheld the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II]. And I tell you right now that this will go down in history as one of the most misguided decisions the Supreme Court has ever made and will effectively undermine our democracy.”
First of all, despite Booker's demagoguery, nothing… nothing — in the court's decision makes Jim Crow more likely, legal or constitutional.
Second, the argument for majority-minority districts had great force when the goal was to dismantle the legacy of Jim Crow, but it was always assumed to be temporary, not permanent. You are free to argue that the job is not done. But the reason such plans were supposed to be temporary is inherent to the goal of the civil rights movement and the legislation it inspired: to move beyond racial classifications of Americans. That was the goal of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “dream” of an America where everyone is judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin.
That's why the Voting Rights Act explicitly says: “Nothing in this section establishes the right for members of a protected class to be elected in numbers equal to their proportion in the population.” In other words, even the text makes it clear that we do not want to live in a country where white voters can only be represented by white representatives and black voters by black representatives.
An irony of the push to create majority-minority districts during the 1980s and 1990s is that while it did wonders to boost black representation in Congress, it also boosted Republican representation. By squeezing reliably Democratic-voting African Americans into compact districts, the remaining districts in the South became more winnable for Republicans, which is why the GOP often cynically cooperated with the process. The Congressional Black Caucus sees this as a worthwhile trade-off (God knows Republicans did it) on the theory that racial representation is more important than partisan advantage.
But do we really believe that white Democrats—in the post-Jim Crow South, or elsewhere—are unwilling or unable to represent the political interests of black voters? Do black legislators ignore the interests of their white constituents?
Which brings me back to where I started.
Cory Booker is black. Black residents make up about 13% of their state's population. Are the other 87% disenfranchised or unrepresented by choice? Of course not. But I would love to have heard Booker explain why.
UNKNOWN: @JonahDispatch
