Voting Rights--and Wrongs: The Elusive Quest for Racially Fair Elections
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 actOs...
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In Voting Rights-and Wrongs: The Elusive Quest for Racially Fair Elections, Abigail Thernstrom explores the complex issues raised by the Voting Rights Act today. Thernstrom celebrates the landmark 1965 law that opened southern voting booths to African Americans-while challenging its evolution into a tool to create a racially fair distribution of political power. Federal law now requires states to draw majority-minority legislative districts, giving minority voters a uniquely sheltered status. Color-conscious policies were morally justified when the only alternative was the perpetuation of all-white or overwhelmingly white legislatures. Today, such race-conscious districting may create less-rather than more-integrated politics.
