Voting Rights--and Wrongs: The Elusive Quest for
Racially Fair Elections
by Abigail Thernstrom (Author), Juan Williams
(Foreword)
The 1965 Voting Rights Act is the crown jewel of
American civil rights legislation. Its passage marked the death knell of the
Jim Crow South. But that was the beginning, not the end, of an important debate
on race and representation in American democracy. When is the distribution of
political power racially fair? Who counts as a representative of black and
Hispanic interests? How we answer such questions shapes our politics and public
policy in profound but often unrecognized ways. The actOs original aim was
simple: Give African Americans the same political opportunity enjoyed by other
citizens_the chance to vote, form political coalitions, and elect the candidates
of their choice. But in the racist South, it soon became clear that access to
the ballot would not, by itself, provide the political opportunity the statute
promised. Most southern whites were unwilling to vote for black candidates, and
southern states were ready to alter electoral systems to maintain white
supremacy. In this provocative book, Abigail Thernstrom argues that southern
resistance to black political power began a process by which the act was
radically revised both for good and ill. Congress, the courts, and the Justice
Department altered the statute to ensure the election of blacks and Hispanics
to legislative bodies ranging from school boards and county councils to the
U.S. Congress. Proportional racial representation_equality of results rather
than mere equal opportunity_became the revised aim of the act. Blacks came to
be treated as politically different_entitled to inequality in the form of a
unique political privilege. Majority-minority districts that reserved seats for
blacks and Hispanics succeeded in integrating southern politics. By now,
however, those districts may perversely limit the potential power of black
officeholders. OMax-blackO districts typically elect candidates to the left of
most voters; those officeholders rarely win in majority-white settings. Such
race-conscious districting discourages the development of centrist,
Opost-racialO candidates like Barack Obama (who was defeated when he stood for
Congress in one such district). The Voting Rights Act has become a period piece
that today serves to keep most black legislators clustered on the sidelines of
American politics_precisely the opposite of what its framers intended. A
radically revised law would better serve the political interests of all
Americans_minority and white voters alike.
