The Badger Herald: News: Professor challenges Supreme Court rulings on redistricting

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Professor challenges Supreme Court rulings on redistricting

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Also by Micah S. Berken:

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Deeply divided SSFC fails to pass compromise (February 11, 2003)

Monday, September 30, 2002 12:00 a.m.

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Contrary to popular belief, voting areas redistricted to reflect an black majority actually have more biracial appeal in representing the interests of an entire district, UW professor David Canon said Friday.

This point challenges recent Supreme Court rulings stating that white views are ignored in districts that have been reshaped to reflect a black majority.

“That wasn’t true before, when [a voting district] was represented by whites. Black interests really were ignored,” Canon added.

“My evidence shows that these black-majority districts that have been criticized for polarizing the races and separating the races, in fact, don’t.”

Saying to the small group that, “I feel like I’m doing a lounge act,” Dr. Canon hosted a speech entitled “Racial Redistricting and the Supreme Court,” sponsored by the Governance and Public Policy Board of Directors at the Fluno Center last week.

“The board features speakers interested in current events,” member Terry Shelton said. “We try to involve the whole campus.”

Listeners dressed in suits and ties listened as the author of the book “Race, Redistricting, and Representation” spoke on the facts and fallacies of rebuilding voting districts to reflect minority viewpoints.

Canon is considered an expert in American political institutions. He also teaches courses on American government with a focus on Congress, the president and political parties.

Other topics in the speech included the role of the Supreme Court versus the Legislature in political issues such as racial redistricting. Canon questioned its truthfulness, as justices such as Sandra Day O’Conner have ruled, that the elected are more likely to represent a certain electoral group than the constituency as a whole.

Canon disagrees with this assumption, which has fostered criticism from both conservative and liberal voices.

“The assumption of racial apartheid only applies to race- based issues,” he said. “In issues of motherhood and apple pie, there is no racial divide.”

Citing research he’s collected, Canon admitted that as far as firm racial issues, such as affirmative action, blacks are far more liberal than white legislators. However, when asked about part-racial to non-racial issues, such as housing assistance or environmental policy, this gap quickly narrows until there is “literally no difference between African- Americans and whites.”

He added that there was something like “a thousandth of a percentage point difference,” in these “politics of commonality.”

In fact, Canon argued, perhaps the court system should not be involved at all. He pointed out that in order to file a lawsuit, a plaintiff has to show harm. Since he has proven that white voters are being adequately represented, and therefore not harmed, the court system should not be involved.

“In this case, the majority argues about being victims of generalized, stigmatized harm,” he stated. “That usually applies to the minority.”

“The court really shouldn’t be making political decisions,” he said later. “And that’s a big, general issue that applies across a broad range of causes that apply there.”