Missouri's Jim Crow Gerrymander

 

by Pa Rock

Missouri Voter

Yesterday I used this space to highlight the reemergence of Jim Crow practices across the American South by focusing on this week's congressional redistricting in Tennessee, a political farce in which the Tennessee legislature drew and passed new congressional district maps for "partisan advantage," but which also spoke loudly to racial disadvantage and will effectively eliminate the  state's only Black member of Congress.  The core of Tennessee's new plan is to divide the city of Memphis, which is about two-thirds Black and heavily Democratic, and place it in three other districts, thereby diluting not only Democratic power, but also Black power.  The new maps, in fact, should not only dilute Democratic and Black power, it should stop either of those political forces from reaching Congress from the Volunteer state of Tennessee.

Tennessee was able to get away with that travesty on democracy by virtue of a recent US Supreme Court decision which gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and essentially ruled that although racial discrimination in the drawing of congressional district maps remains unconstitutional, it is alright to draw political maps for partisan advantage.    The fact that most Blacks tend to vote Democratic and were therefore split up when the legislature divided heavily Democratic Memphis into three neighboring congressional districts, was just coincidental - and Tennessee will no longer have any Democratic or Black representation in the US Congress.  

Too bad, so sad, that's just how Trump version of democracy operates, and his judges say so.

In the blog posting yesterday I noted that Missouri's backwater legislature would undoubtedly do something like that with our sole remaining Democratic (and coincidentally majority Black) congressional district that basically encompasses the city of St. Louis.  At that point I should have elaborated on, but instead totally ignored, the current political situation with our other major city:  Kansas City

Last year our right-wing GOP legislature here in the Show-Me state drew new congressional maps that decimated the political power of Kansas City.  The legislature, which is dominated by people from rural areas and large cow towns like Springfield, split Kansas City into three neighboring districts and created a situation almost certain to unseat one of the state's current two Black and Democratic congressmen.  The new districts all come together in downtown Kansas City and then stretch out into the rural parts of the state.  One of those districts covers roughly the top third of the state, and is so large that it borders four other states.   Some residents of downtown Kansas City will be in a congressional district that stretches all the way to Illinois!

So, Missouri has its own Memphis.

Missouri citizens did not take the legislature's partisan and bigoted assault on democracy lying down.  Petitions to get the new maps before the voters for their approval (or not) were promptly passed and adequate numbers of signatures were collected, but the Republican secretary of state, a CPA - which means he should be able to count - has not rushed to verify signatures, and now, if they are verified by the secretary of state, the referendum on the new maps will not be on the ballot until this November when the new maps will already be in effect.  That means that Kansas City has officially lost its Democratic and Black representation in Congress for at least two years.

The St. Louis metropolitan area is already divided into four congressional districts (including the one in which I reside - and I am about a four-hour drive from downtown St. Louis - and yet one of those districts, Missouri's 1st, is the core of the city and still has a Black Democrat representing it in Congress.    I am not a political cartographer, and I suspect that drawing a map that would smash that district would be very difficult, but I would still wager that there are farmers and car dealers and lobbyists sitting around coffee shops in Jefferson City today who are hell bent on finally turning the Missouri delegation to Congress into a completely White and Republican group, as God intended.

It's not a legitimate government unless we all get to participate.