National: Supreme Court to consider political segregation | USA Today
The explosive issue of racial segregation returns to the Supreme Court on Wednesday, 60 years after justices declared separate schools for blacks and whites unconstitutional. This time, it’s all about politics. At issue is the redrawing of political districts that has contributed to an emerging phenomenon in the South: To get elected, you better be a black Democrat or a white Republican. The court will be asked by black and Democratic Alabama residents to strike down the state’s legislative maps drawn by Republicans. They claim the maps pack too many black voters into the districts of black legislators to make surrounding districts more hospitable to the GOP. For an object lesson in such racial-political purity, the justices need only look at the congressional results from Election Day in the Deep South, stretching from South Carolina to Louisiana. Rep. John Barrow of Georgia, the last white Democrat in the House from any of those five states, lost re-election after his district was redrawn. Now every Democrat is black, and every Republican is white.