Voting Rights--and Wrongs: The Elusive Quest for Racially Fair

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Voting Rights--and Wrongs: The Elusive Quest for Racially Fair Elections
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The 1965 Voting Rights Act is the crown jewel of American civil rights legislation. Its passage marked the death knell of the Jim Crow South. But that was the beginning, not the end, of an important debate on race and representation in American democracy. When is the distribution of political power racially fair? Who counts as a representative of black and Hispanic interests? How we answer such questions shapes our politics and public policy in profound but often unrecognized ways.

The act's original aim was simple: Give African Americans the same political opportunity enjoyed by other citizensâ€•the chance to vote, form political coalitions, and elect the candidates of their choice. But in the racist South, it soon became clear that access to the ballot would not, by itself, provide the political opportunity the statute promised. Most southern whites were unwilling to vote for black candidates, and southern states were ready to alter electoral systems to maintain white supremacy.

In this provocative book, Abigail Thernstrom argues that southern resistance to black political power began a process by which the act was radically revised both for good and ill. Congress, the courts, and the Justice Department altered the statute to ensure the election of blacks and Hispanics to legislative bodies ranging from school boards and county councils to the U.S. Congress. Proportional racial representationâ€•equality of results rather than mere equal opportunityâ€•became the revised aim of the act. Blacks came to be treated as politically differentâ€•entitled to inequality in the form of a unique political privilege.

Majority-minority districts that reserved seats for blacks and Hispanics succeeded in integrating southern politics. By now, however, those districts may perversely limit the potential power of black officeholders. â€œMax-blackâ€ districts typically elect candidates to the left of most voters; those officeholders rarely win in majority-white settings. Such race-conscious districting discourages the development o
Country USA
Brand AEI Press
Manufacturer Aei Press
Binding Paperback
ReleaseDate 2009-06-16
UnitCount 1
EANs 9780844742724

Country	USA
Brand	AEI Press
Manufacturer	Aei Press
Binding	Paperback
ReleaseDate	2009-06-16
UnitCount	1
EANs	9780844742724

Voting Rights--and Wrongs: The Elusive Quest for Racially Fair Elections

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