Minority-Majority Redistricting: Empowerment for Whom?

With Washington receiving a new Congressional seat in the wake of the last census, every politico with a pulse has his or her own ideas about where the new one should be drawn, and how the state's 9 existing districts should shuffle to accommodate it. Some of those opinions matter more than the rest- the five members of the State Redistricting Commission (two Republicans, two Democrats, and a non-voting chairwoman), are the ones who will ultimately make a decision. Yesterday, the four voting Comissioners all released draft proposals of their vision of the state's political landscape for the next decade. One of the proposals seems to have embraced the controversial idea of creating a minority-majority district in the central Sound.

In June, a group called the "United for Fair Representation Coalition" pitched the idea to the Redistricting Commission. They pointed out that such a district could be created out of South Seattle and the suburbs further to the south. They believe that this plan would give Washingtonians of non-white backgrounds a representative who would be far more accountable to those communities than any of our current delegation. It would seem that their presentation had an impact, because the proposed district they drew up appears almost without revision in one of the Commission's plans. Perhaps surprisingly, it's in the plan of one of the Republican Commissioners.

Minority-majority districts were first deliberately drawn during the African-American Civil Rights struggle, as a way of correcting the fact that Southern states in which blacks were only barely a minority were electing all-white Congressional delegations. This federally-mandated redistricting was successful in making delegations more representative of their states and the country as a whole, and the process has been repeated over the years to empower Latinos and Asian-Americans.

So, is the Republican proposal some magnanimous gesture to ethnic groups like blacks, Latinos, and Asians with whom they've generally had poor relations? If the cynic in you finds that unlikely, you may have a point. Minority empowerment through redistricting often comes with the side-effect of far greater empowerment of white conservatives. By concentrating groups that are often among the most reliably left-Democratic voters into one district, any surrounding district becomes, on average, whiter and more conservative. With fewer blacks and Latinos (who have overwhelmingly supported Democrats) in his district, Dave Reichert's precarious re-election bid suddenly looks more assured. With some of his most reliable supporters suddenly out of the district, comfortable incumbent Adam Smith could become more vulnerable.

Much of the GOP's success since the Reagan era has come by painting the Democrats as the party of "the other:" a vehicle for feminists, gays, bohemians, and racial minorities who want to nag "real America" for money and special privileges. In the Deep South states that first tried minority-majority redistricting, party affiliation follows uncomfortable close to racial divisions, with the Democrats as the black party, and the Republicans as the white party. In 2008, Obama's share of the white vote barely broke into double digits in several former Confederate states. Some observers put some of the blame for this polarization on redistricting. Just as creating a minority-majority district gives us a congressman who is solely accountable to those communities, it also, by extension, gives us more congressmen who have no accountability at all to minority voters, and are free to play on bigotry and majoritarianism without electoral consequences.

Even with all those caveats, the fact remains that there are Washingtonians who are poorly served by the status quo, and a minority-majority district would give these groups one of the most powerful tools in politics- a seat in Congress. As the state becomes more diverse, the government will inevitably evolve to reflect those changes. Now, the debate begins over whether this redistricting proposal represents part of that evolution, or an attempt to further marginalize Washington's minority communities.