Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, April 20, 1995 TAG: 9504200086
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Knight-Ridder/Tribune
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
``I think it's a watershed case,'' A. Lee Parks, who argued the case against Georgia's congressional voting districts, told reporters after the court session.
``This is the political equivalent of Brown vs. Board of Education,'' said Georgia Rep. Sanford Bishop, citing the Supreme Court's most famous desegregation case.
For Parks and others who believe the government has gone too far in its attempt to create voting districts in which racial minorities predominate, the case could be the first step in turning back a new sort of segregation.
Rather than moving the country toward a color blind society, Parks said, artificially created majority-minority districts ``enforce racial stereotypes.''
But Bishop, a Democrat from a new majority-black South Georgia district, is among dozens of black members of Congress - plus uncounted others in lower offices - who could suffer directly if the court rules that the Justice Department improperly pushed Georgia too far to create majority-black voting districts.
The case could determine ``whether we'll have political pluralism or political apartheid,'' Bishop said.
Most of the recent growth in black and Hispanic members of Congress has come from majority-minority districts created since 1990.
Many of those resulted from innovative mapping techniques, often relying on computer analysis, that allowed small black or Hispanic communities to be grouped into oddly shaped voting districts that stretch for hundreds of miles.
by CNB