THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, October 10, 1994 TAG: 9410100043
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY FRANCIE LATOUR, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHESAPEAKE LENGTH: Long : 141 lines
To hear Justice Department officials tell it, race has cleaved the city of Chesapeake to its core: Polarized voters are the problem; ward elections are the solution.
But in the city itself, growing divisions over how citizens should elect school boards and city councils are not playing out as federal predictions would have them - in black and white.
Opposition to a ward system is taking unexpected shapes across the city, cutting across racial, partisan and neighborhood boundaries. For reasons as diverse as the people who espouse them, some residents not only reject the idea of their city as racist, but argue that wards could create the very problem the Justice Department says it is trying to solve - a city pitted against itself.
``I think that the ward system has a tendency to divide the city up,'' said Reginald C. Woodhouse, an African-American minister and production controller from South Norfolk.
Woodhouse's roots in South Norfolk reach back to his parent's generation, when the predominantly black neighborhood was still part of Norfolk County.
Those who support wards have argued that older communities like South Norfolk would stand to gain much-needed attention as a separate district.
None of the city's nine council members lives in the South Norfolk area.
But carving Chesapeake into nine or more sections, Woodhouse said, could pit local officials against each other and discourage them from working toward common goals for the city.
``We would have more problems than we already have,'' Woodhouse said, ``with everybody trying to make sure that my section gets a little bit more than your section. That would be a big mistake for Chesapeake.''
The consequences could be worse, residents say, for those voters within a particular ward who disagree with their elected representative.
``The ward system works against the other 49 percent who didn't vote for the candidate,'' said Muriel Y. Perkins, a Deep Creek native and assistant principal at Crestwood Middle School. ``Because once they're blocked out of their particular ward, they've lost their voice.''
Perkins rejected wards as a false solution for the city's problems, even as she described how the at-large system has failed to make council members responsive and accountable to the needs of citizens.
``I don't know if they have the best interests of Chesapeake at heart,'' Perkins said, ``or if they have their own interest or their own area at heart.''
Many residents already perceive a lopsided emphasis on the city's rapidly developing Great Bridge section at the expense of other communities.
``I would like to see a councilman, when we've got a problem in Dock Landing, (who) won't ask, `Where's that?' '' said William ``Bud'' West, a Dock Landing resident who retired there after 30 years in the Air Force.
``Or a councilman (who) wouldn't come to the Western Branch Community Center and apologize for being late because he got lost.''
For better or worse, the spectrum of local concern about ward and at-large elections has not translated into the same priorities at the federal level.
``The Justice Department is not as concerned with the philosophy behind every municipality's local government,'' said Thomas R. Morris, a political scientist and president of Emory & Henry College, in Emory, Va.
Morris' recent study, ``Quiet Revolution in the South,'' explores the effects of the 1965 Voting Rights Act on Virginia and other Southern states.
Virginia trails the rest of the South in electing black representatives at the local level, Morris' research found.
``Wards are one remedy to racially polarized voting,'' Morris said. ``But in rectifying that problem it may generate new ones, such as a more parochial or divided council.''
Many Chesapeake residents question how deep the racial divide runs, and whether a ward system would work to close the gap or widen it.
With the city divided into largely black-run and white-run districts, citizens ask, what will compel the two races to communicate?
``When you're doing wards, the assumption is, a black person would not have to explain their position to a white councilman, and a white person would not have to explain their position to a black councilman,'' said James G. Thomson, a white resident of Western Branch and member of the Chesapeake Tax Association.
That kind of thinking, Thomson said, could literally polarize the city, sending it back into the days of segregation.
``If we could just get past color, which shouldn't be the issue,'' said Estelle V. Thomas, a machinist for the Newport News shipyards who has made Dunedin her home for the past 13 years.
``There's no doubt that race is going to come up,'' said Thomas, an African American. ``But as long as (our leaders) work for the good of the people, it has to be colorblind.''
But the time for colorblindness may have passed in Chesapeake and other southern cities. The federal government may leave them no options.
In June, the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department rejected Chesapeake's proposed at-large method for electing its School Board.
The federal agency cited racially polarized voting patterns that diluted blacks' ability to elect candidates of their choice in City Council elections.
That rejection has left the City Council with three choices - adopt a ward system, file a lengthy and expensive lawsuit against the federal government, or go back to an appointed School Board.
It also leaves the council with the looming threat of further Justice Department action against its at-large City Council elections.
``It's almost too late now to talk about being colorblind,'' Morris said. ``That's the whole reason jurisdictions were brought under the Voting Rights Act in the first place.''
In violating blacks' voting rights in the past, Morris said, Southern municipalities may have forever forsaken their right to claim race-blindness.
That reality is a bitter pill for any southern city to swallow, especially where biracial efforts have been initiated among residents.
One such resident and civic league leader, Lamont Simmons, said that wards, at best, can only repeat the accomplishment the city already has achieved on its own: putting two or three black representatives on the School Board or City Council.
``We have already achieved the goal of getting the black faces up there,'' said Simmons, who heads the Chesapeake Forward, an umbrella group of mainly African-American organizations.
At worst, Simmons said, the goal of proportional representation that drives the ward system will make the number of the city's black leaders more important than the quality of that leadership.
``Politics is about who gets what,'' Simmons said.
While diversity is an important principle, Simmons said, ``people only want it as it leads to the bottom line - improving the quality of life for them and/or everybody.''
In predominantly black communities like Pughsville and Bells Mills, for example, Simmons said people want to see other people like them sitting on commissions and school boards and city councils.
But they want their sidewalks and sewer hookups and community centers even more.
If they can't get them, Simmons said, the city must examine more than its election mechanics.
``The basic assumption here is that whites vote for whites and blacks vote for blacks,'' Simmons said. ``Is that the true view of Chesapeake? If that's true, then we've got a much bigger problem than just wards or no wards on our hands.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
Muriel Y. Perkins
Color photo by GARY C. KNAPP
William ``Bud'' West said some council members seem to ignore parts
of the city.
KEYWORDS: ELECTION WARD SYSTEM CHESAPEAKE CITY COUNCIL
CHESAPEAKE SCHOOL BOARD DISCRIMINATION by CNB