ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, December 15, 1996 TAG: 9612170001
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: 3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PERRY MORGAN
WHEN FIVE black incumbents won re-election to Congress last month in Southern majority-white districts, an understandable urge to celebrate was dashed with cold water. One cheer maybe, but no more, counseled one of the winners. But more on that later; first, some background:
The Supreme Court ordered these districts in Georgia, Florida and Texas redrawn to eliminate contrived black majorities. Jesse Jackson responded by accusing the court of a ``kind of ethnic cleansing,'' notwithstanding the fact that such majorities had been arranged solely to assure election of the incumbents in the first instance.
Jackson's view was echoed by other contemptuous voices. A common - and ultimately mistaken - view was that election of blacks had to be engineered; therefore, absent gerrymandering, the complexion of Congress would whiten. Well, yes, a growing number of black mayors had been elected without benefit of gerrymanders and, later, a black governor of Virginia and a U.S. senator from Illinois. Not to mention a number of congressmen, including a few from the South.
Despite this, The New York Times in June accused the court of ``a perverse determination to resegregate the nation's politics.''An NAACP official opined that ``the noose is tightening.'' But when the votes were counted, there were to be 37 blacks in Congress, a net loss of one seat (which belonged to a Connecticut Republican defeated for reasons unconnected with court decisions and gerrymanders). Compared with the results predicted, the outcome deserved three cheers and hats in the air.
One should be clear about the nature of the prediction: It was not that some but that nearly all Southern whites would rush to vote against blacks first elected by reason of racial preference, without regard to experience, personal appeal or attitudes on issues. This would be so because it once had been so. Never mind four decades of revolutionary changes in the region. In the privacy of the voting booth, the segregated South would have its revenge.
The reality is quite different. Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney first won election in a gerrymandered district that was 60 percent black. She won her third term in a redrawn district that is 65 percent white, getting 59 percent of the vote. In the five redrawn Southern districts, none with black majorities, all black incumbents won, none by less than 54 percent.
Now, as McKinney points out, all incumbents (eight Republicans and three Democrats) won in Georgia, and there's no denying her point that without the gerrymandered, black-majority districts there would have been no black incumbents. And without incumbency, the black candidates would have lacked the name recognition, track records and contacts necessary to raise campaign funds (almost $1 million in McKinney's case).
McKinney also is right to say that a better test of changed racial attitudes will come when voters encounter black candidates who are not incumbents. Even so, she is far too grudging about the possibility of changed attitudes. Even though McKinney now contends her victory never was in doubt because she has a good staff and a ``darn good'' record, that record is distinctly liberal in a conservative state and she doubtless lost some white votes because of it. Moreover, there must have been doubt about victory, especially a whopping 59 percent victory. When the court turned thumbs down on her former black-majority district last year, she said that black officeholders faced ``extinction.''
There is too much prejudice not to admit and celebrate any recession of it. The success of five black candidates running without racial advantage speaks of progress that can't be expunged by clever analysis. The real measure of that progress is grasped best by imagining the national crepe-hanging that would have followed defeat of some or all of the black incumbents.
One other aspect of Rep. McKinney's analysis is worth nothing: If incumbency shapes election results powerfully, so do voting records. The reception accorded future black candidates by white voters will reflect how she herself comes to be regarded. In Indianapolis, Julia Carson, a black Democrat, won election in a 69 percent-white district after telling voters, ``I am not your African-American candidate. I am the Democratic candidate for Congress.''
Perry Morgan is a former publisher of The (Norfolk) Virginian-Pilot.
LENGTH: Medium: 78 lines ILLUSTRATION: GRAPHIC: Bob Newman/Newsdayby CNB