An only-half sarcastic observation on the state of our modern political climate, launched toward Diane Rehm when she was hosting a discussion of various voting rights issues. Her guests were talking about the desirability of applying “racial sensitivity” in the creation of Congressional districts to ensure fair representation for minorities.
It kind of made me yearn for the sanity of Lani Guinier (who, for the record, I both thought was generally right about how to make voting fairer and thought was horribly mistreated not only by the Republican Congress but by her nominal champion, Bill Clinton)…
26 February 2013
You do understand the irony, don’t you?
By insisting that districts must be constructed to group minorities together the government is pursuing a formal policy of “separate-but-equal”.
They are enforcing, by law, the policy that minorities cannot be integrated into districts with non-minorities but must, instead, be segregated into enclaves of their own…..
Whether that’s good or bad may be debated. But it ought to be recognized and acknowledged.
© Copyright 2013, Augustus P. Lowell