Filed Under:  OpEd, Opinion

Stop gerrymandering

1st February 2021   ·   0 Comments

The biggest problem facing Black Louisianans leapt back into view when Louisiana’s Congressional Delegation voted on the second impeachment of Donald J. Trump.

As soon as the votes were cast, it became painfully clear that the racial and partisan gerrymandering that favors Louisiana’s white Republican elected officials is still an obstacle to equality and justice for Black Louisianans.

Republican Reps. Steve Scalise, Clay Higgins, Garret Graves and Mike Johnson voted against impeaching Trump. Republican Senators John Kennedy and Bill Cassidy voted to dismiss impeachment charges. Democratic Rep. Cedric Richmond, the only Black member of the delegation, voted to impeach Trump.

In voting against impeachment, these Louisiana Republicans sent the message that they had no problem with Trump’s attempt to throw out the votes of Black people in states with large electoral votes. They also signaled that the Jan. 6 insurrection Trump incited should be forgotten and we should just move on. Even though their very lives were at risk and five people died as a result of the racist Trump supporters’ siege of the U.S. Capitol, they refused to impeach Trump for high crimes and misdemeanors.

Observers of the Republicans have watched them debase themselves, choose money and power (some say Party) over our national security and well-being, take marching orders from Trump to withhold aid from Americans during a deadly viral pandemic, and trample on our Constitution and ignore the rule of law.

As they groveled at Trump’s feet and kissed his ring, their motive became crystal clear: They were and still are afraid that Trump will primary them or whip up his base against them, and they will lose the privileges, power, perks and access to money that comes with being elected to Congress.

However, the domestic terrorism spanned by their dear leader and their majority in the U.S. Senate has come to an end. Gerrymandering is the only trick they have to rig elections in their favor.

Black Louisianans have endured the devastating effects of the gerrymandering the state legislature did after the 2010 Census. The Census is only taken every 10 years and when the 2021 Census count is released, Louisiana’s Black elected officials must be ready with a plan to ensure that their white counterparts don’t gerrymander our districts and keep us from getting a seat at the table where the economic pie is served up.

Before the Louisiana Legislature redrew district lines after the 2010 Census, legislative control was evenly split and state control was divided between the Republican and Democratic parties. In 2011, Republican legislators gerrymandered district lines and scored a trifecta. Governor Bobby Jindal won a second term and Republicans controlled both the House and Senate.

The election of John Bel Edwards in 2015 ended the Republican trifecta but Republicans maintained the majority on both sides of the Louisiana Legislature.

During the 2019-2020 election cycle, the National Democratic Redistricting Committee (NDRC), chaired by former U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., targeted 13 states, including three gubernatorial races, 17 state legislative chambers and one down-ballot race in an attempt to stop states from having a Republican trifecta and gerrymandering districts in 2021. Louisiana was in that number.

“Gerrymandered districts have had disastrous policy consequences, leading to some of the most right-wing legislation in decades both in Congress and at the state level, including assaults on women’s health, suppressing the vote for people of color, failing to address climate change, and refusing to stand up to the epidemic of gun violence,” according to the NDRC. “These policies don’t reflect the majority of voters, but because Republicans have rigged the system in their favor, voters are limited in their ability to do anything about it.”

Proof that Louisiana’s districts were partisan and racially gerrymandered shows in the percentages of white Republican elected officials who control both the state legislature and Congressional delegation. Whites comprise 58.4 percent of Louisiana’s population, yet white Republicans hold a 65-percent majority in the Louisiana Senate, a 63 percent majority in the state House, 83 percent of Congressional seats and 100 percent of the U.S. Senate seats.

We’re not saying that Black voters only vote for Black candidates. We are not monolithic, but history has taught us that we level the playing field when we elect folks that look like us. Nor are we saying that all white people are racists. They’re not. History has documented the heroic acts of many whites who were and still are clearly against institutional racism.

Yet, numbers and actions don’t lie. The 74 million people who voted for an avowed racist for president and the thousands of whites who stormed the U.S. Capitol to keep him in power are as racist as the white Republicans who stood by him as he enacted racist policies, attacked people of color and who voted against counting the electoral college votes on Insurrection Day.

We have to wait and see if the balance of power shifts after Louisiana’s special elections on March 20, 2021 to fill the unexpired term of Rep. Cedric Richmond, who is leaving Congress to be a special advisor to President Joe Biden and elect a new Congressperson to fill the seat of Louisiana’s 5th congressional district’s member-elect Luke Letlow, who died December 29, 2020 from COVID-19.

Meanwhile, the Census count is scheduled for release to states by March 31, 2021. Louisiana legislators are expected to begin the task of reapportionment (redistricting) during the 2021 legislative session which begins on April 12 and ends on June 10.

There is, however, a glimmer of hope that fairer districts will be drawn this time.

Republicans no longer have a trifecta in Louisiana’s legislature, nor do they have a supermajority on either side of the legislative body.

Louisiana’s Black elected officials at the local, state and federal levels and the NAACP, National Urban League, SPLC (Southern Poverty Law Center), ACLU, Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights and the NDRC must be ready with a plan to stop Republicans from gerrymandering Louisiana’s local, state and federal districts in 2021. Their plan should also include being at the table when the map is drawn. The Louisiana Legislative Black Caucus (LLBC) should also hire an expert like Cedric Floyd to draw a fair district map and review and report on the map the legislators draw.

If the Republicans try to gerrymander the district map on racial and partisan lines and reject the input from the LLBC, Black officials at local, state and federal levels have to call them out and put pressure on Governor John Bel Edwards to veto any district map that is rigged in Republicans’ favor.

If Black elected officials fail to act or if they sell us out, Black communities won’t get a fair share of state and federal resources. We will also have to, once again, bear witness to the embarrassing spectacle of Louisiana’s white Republicans voting against the interests of Blacks and other people of color, the poor, women and children and the needy among us.

This article originally published in the February 1, 2021 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.

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