Jack Salzman, Cornel West Struggles in the Promised

328 // THEODORE M. SHAW
North Carolina's Eleventh Congressional District, which elected African
American Mel Watt, as "bizarre", and stated:
A reapportionment plan that includes in one district individuals who
belong to the same race, but who are otherwise widely separated by geographical
and political boundaries, and who may have little in common
with one another but the color of their skin, bears an uncomfortable resemblance
to political apartheid.
Injustice O'Connor's view, the creation of majority black congressional districts
such as the one at issue in Shaw frustrated "the multiracial, multireligious
communities that our Constitution seeks to weld together as one." 15 The 5—4
majority in Shaw also opined that creating majority-minority districts reinforces
the perception that members of the same racial group, regardless of their age, education,
economic status, or community in which they live—think alike, share the
same political interests, and will prefer the same candidates at the polls and that
"[w]hen a district obviously is created solely to effectuate the perceived common
interests of one racial group, elected officials are more likely to believe that their
primary obligation is to represent only members of that group, rather than their
constituency as a whole." Although the injuries traditionally alleged before federal
court jurisdiction was exercised in voting rights cases were not present in
Shaw, Justice O'Connor explained that under the new "analytically distinct" cause
of action the Court was recognizing, the challenged reapportionment legislation
"reinforces racial stereotypes and threatens to undermine our system of representative
democracy by signaling to elected officials that they represent a particular
racial group rather than their constituency as a whole." Thus, "{r]acial gerrymandering,
even for remedial purposes, may balkanize us into competing racial factions;
it threatens to carry us further from the goal of a political system in which
race no longer matters—a goal that the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments
embody, and to which the nation continues to aspire." 16
The Supreme Court's Shaw opinion has opened the floodgates to litigation by
white plaintiffs who have launched a widespread attack on political empowerment
of African Americans and Latinos that was accomplished pursuant to the
Voting Rights Act. The ill-founded assumptions lurking in the Shaw opinion are
well imbedded in social and political discourse, and trial court judges have openly
expressed hostility to the Voting Rights Act and its political progeny. The
ironies and fallacies are obvious. In the name of protecting African Americans
from being stereotyped, the federal courts are striking down districts that provide
them with opportunities to elect candidates from their communities. 17 Shaw was
remanded to the three-judge trial court after the Supreme Court determined that
white voters could challenge districts that are so "bizarre" in appearance that they
can be interpreted as attempts to "segregate" voters among congressional districts.
After a trial the court ruled that while the challenged districts did look