Black, white, wrong all over

In a decision that united Justice Clarence Thomas and four liberal jurists, the Supreme Court last week found that North Carolina legislators violated the Constitution by drawing two congressional districts along racial lines. The cynical process of gerrymandering — whereby politicians pick their voters and not the other way around by carving up territory to cobble together safe districts for themselves and fellow partisans — is still alive and well.

But here’s hoping the ruling speeds its demise, and hastens the day that independent, nonpartisan redistricting gives state and federal legislatures a fighting chance to recover from an era of hopeless division.

In a 2011 redrawing of lines, Republicans who controlled the Carolina legislature had set out, as just about all state pols do, to maximize their party’s advantage, in this case by packing nearly as many black voters as they could into two districts — voters who happen also to vote Democratic.

(Once upon a time Democrats strongly supported just such concentration, in the name of electing minority legislators, but that’s a story for another day.)

Justice Elena Kagan, writing for the majority, rejected the idea that party domination can be used as an excuse when the result is that black voters are egregiously concentrated, their votes essentially diluted.

She argued that, particularly in the American South, with its history of racial polarization, race and party were essentially proxies for one another.

Fair conclusion. But the far bigger problem is the tool of gerrymandering itself, which eviscerates the vital center and kills the potential for intelligent compromise.

The court will be asked soon to take up a case involving Wisconsin’s 2012 redistricting. A lower court determined that the GOP legislature’s gerrymander diluted Democratic voter power to such an extent as to violate the Constitution.

If the high court agrees, it could sound the death-knell of partisan gerrymandering, and the rise of the type of independent redistricting that’s now in place in a handful of states. Bring it on.