ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, December 5, 1995 TAG: 9512050089
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: AARON EPSTEIN KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
The growing political power of racial minorities will be at stake today when the Supreme Court searches for constitutional meaning in congressional districts shaped like snakes, birds or bugs splattered on windshields.
The districts - three in Texas and two in North Carolina - were drawn to sweep in enough minority voters to enable them to send black or Hispanic representatives to Congress.
Like other forms of affirmative action, the creation of minority districts is a practice under attack by those who pursue the ideal of a colorblind society or resent what they see as special favors for minorities.
As the justices listen to arguments, they must examine the disputed districts and ask themselves: How much racial motivation do I see here? Is it so great as to violate the 14th Amendment's promise of ``equal protection of the laws''?
Their answers to thispolitical Rorschach test, to be announced by July, may have a sweeping impact.
Defenders of minority interests fear that one more conservative high court ruling against racial redistricting could wipe out many of the gains made by blacks, Hispanics and other minorities in Congress, state legislatures and local councils and school boards.
The Texas and North Carolina cases arrive at the high court as Congress has reached a historic peak of racial and ethnic diversity. The membership includes 40 blacks, 17 Hispanics, five Asians and one American Indian. They are overwhelmingly Democratic.
If the minorities lose the Texas and North Carolina cases, the number of blacks in Congress could be cut so drastically that ``they can meet in the back of a taxicab,'' predicted Theodore M. Shaw, associate director of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.
If the Supreme Court were to insist that political districts be drawn without regard to race, it would effectively favor the white majority, repeal the Voting Rights Act and ``inevitably result in the broad purge of minorities from elected office,'' the American Civil Liberties Union said.
Civil rights organizations, the Clinton administration, Texas and North Carolina argue that minority-dominated districts are essential to remedy racial discrimination and racially polarized voting patterns.
Of the 40 blacks elected to Congress, 36 come from districts in which most of the voters are black. All 17 blacks elected to Congress from states of the old Confederacy represent such ``majority-minority'' districts.
such districts, civil rights advocates say, minorities rarely would get elected because whites usually vote for white candidates, blacks for blacks.
``How do they know?'' replied Abigail Thernstrom, author of a book on voting rights and of a conservative legal brief in the Texas case. ``We have a lot of evidence, mainly from mayoral elections, that black candidates can win by putting together a black-white coalition.
``The overwhelming majority of black mayors have needed white votes - and they got white votes. Most members of the Congressional Black Coalition would lose [in white-majority districts], not because of their race, but because they're way to the left. I don't want districts that are race-driven.''
Which is precisely what the Supreme Court has said in recent decisions.
In 1993, a 5-4 ruling written by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor declared that a district is especially vulnerable to attack if it is ``bizarre'' in shape and contains a majority of voters with little in common but the color of their skin. Such a district, she said, ``bears an uncomfortable resemblance to political apartheid.''
In June, a 5-4 decision written by Justice Anthony Kennedy went further, saying the ``bizarreness'' of a district's shape was only part of the constitutional standard.
A district could be unconstitutional, he said, if ``race was the predominant factor'' in its design and if traditional principles of redistricting - such as compactness, shared interests of voters and respect for community boundaries - were submerged.
The ruling appeared to endanger minority representation everywhere, although O'Connor wrote in a concurring opinion that only ``extreme cases'' of racial gerrymandering actually were in jeopardy. Her moderate approach makes the outcome of the Texas and North Carolina cases difficult to predict.
As if to emphasize the divisions over the role of race in electoral politics, lower courts struck down the Texas districts and upheld the districts in North Carolina.
The justices have warned that race-based districting ``may Balkanize us into competing factions'' and ``carry us further from the goal of a political system in which race no longer matters.''
But former federal appeals Judge A. Leon Higginbotham Jr. of Philadelphia, representing the Congressional Black Caucus, said hostile racial divisions have existed for more than a century in North Carolina.
``Americans of all races see the world through prisms colored by their individual and collective pasts,'' Higginbotham wrote. ``For this reason, a district that to some resembles a `bug splattered on a windshield' may to others look more like a winding path leading to political inclusion.''
LENGTH: Medium: 93 linesby CNB