Want to dismantle structural racism in the US? Help fight gerrymandering
Americans looking for immediate ways to work to dismantle structural racism can – and must – turn their attention to this November’s state legislative races. Down-ballot races may not receive the same hype as the Biden-Trump contest, but those state races will determine to what extent antiracist activists and lawmakers will be able to achieve concrete policy gains for the next decade. Fighting gerrymandering is one of the best ways to fight structural racism.
Whichever party wins biggest in state races in November will be able to tip the political scales until 2031. In 35 states, the state legislature draws new district maps every 10 years. In many, congressional and state legislative district maps are drawn with highly sophisticated computer programs designed to rig the system for the incumbent political party. Politicians effectively pick their voters.
Ahead of 2010, the last redistricting election, Republican operatives designed a strategic plan to flip underthe-radar state seats so that they could control congressional and legislative map-drawing. Republicans swept state races, winning an additional 675 state legislative seats and another six governorships. Democrats ceded ground across the country, even in unanticipated places like Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio and Wisconsin. Those wins enabled Republicans to gerrymander maps so that hundreds of state legislative seats nationwide were no longer competitive and the balance of power in Congress was changed by almost 20 House seats.
Unfair maps are a major form of structural racism hiding in plain sight. In recent redistricting plans, Republicans have “packed” and “cracked” Black communities to secure their advantage. By rigging the system to reduce Democratic representation and keep incumbents in office, gerrymandered maps dilute the voting power of people of color and their neighbors. Those voters have little recourse when lawmakers pass or refuse to overturn state-level policies that hurt people of color.
The US supreme court has prohibited explicit racial gerrymanders but has declined to ban gerrymanders that effectively achieve the same outcome. For decades, loud racist campaign rhetoric and behind-the-scenes gerrymandering plans have worked hand-inglove: stump speeches about “law and order” or “immigrants stealing jobs” get a candidate elected; gerrymandering incentivizes appealing to the most polarized voters and all but guarantees an incumbent will stay in office; the incumbent’s presence in the legislature allows the state to enact increasingly extreme legislation on issues ranging from guns to healthcare to climate change to prisons to policing – and, of course, voting.
There’s no confusing the motive behind this cycle of rhetoric, gerrymandering, disenfranchisement and policy. Some of today’s most entrenched gerrymanders were originally spearheaded by Lee Atwater, a Republican operative who infamously described the trajectory of Republican messaging on race by saying that by 1968 they couldn’t use the N-word anymore because it “backfired”, so instead “you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff ”.
The concerted effort took off just before the 1990 census. Atwater laid a plan to racially gerrymander Florida, which for years Blue Dog Democrats had gerrymandered to keep themselves in power. By 1999, Florida Republicans held the trifecta – governorship, house, and senate – for the first time since Reconstruction. And they’ve had a lock on power on the state level ever since. Atwater and his allies went on to execute a similar plan in eight southern states.
As the pandemic and its economic fallout have devastated our nation, we have seen the real-life repercussions of Republican gerrymanders. In Florida, Republican lawmakers declined to expand Medicaid, leaving roughly 800,000 low-income Floridians without health insurance. In 2013, after organizers in Orange county succeeded in winning support for local ordinances that guaranteed workers paid sick days, the state legislature passed a law preventing local municipalities from passing their own paid sick leave policies. The wildfire spread of Covid-19 has made obvious how harmful it is to require low-income workers to choose between staying home when they’re sick and keeping their jobs.
These policies are the building blocks of structural racism: workers of color are more likely than white workers to be paid poverty-level wages. Black workers are more likely to hold jobs deemed “essential” during Covid-19 shutdowns. Yet 20 states have pre-emption laws on the books that prevent city leaders from passing their own local sick leave policies. In fact, as the virus spread this spring and summer, many states moved to prohibit local municipalities from enacting their own maskwearing and stay-at-home policies.
After Republicans took over state legislatures in 2010, states implemented an increasing number of pre-emption laws that prevent cities from having their own laws on guns, wages, employment discrimination, clean energy and more. States’ leeway in prohibiting city leaders from coming up with their own solutions to their constituents’ problems is only going to become more important as municipalities nationwide face unprecedented
budget shortfalls, unemployment and evictions as well as dissent and grief over policing. No matter how progressive city leaders try to be, their efforts can be stymied by state officials. State lawmakers who overrepresent white Americans will continue to override lawmakers elected by citydwellers who are disproportionately zlack, brown, immigrant, and LGBTQ+. Unless, of course, we change the balance of power in November.
In 2018, Democrats organized across the country and won back six legislative chambers in six states – real gains, but not enough to undo Republican control in large swaths of the country. Republican donors have strategically invested in state races to win in a redistricting year. Now, Republican operatives are acting on ambitious plans to win as many legislative seats as possible ahead of 2021. Those plans will have the side-effect of helping Trump and will potentially enable Republicans to keep their grip on the underlying power structure even if Trump leaves office.
Remedies to our nation’s many forms of systemic injustice often feel so enormous as to be out of reach. But there are actions we can all take to minimize unfair gerrymanders and to reform state policies. You can support efforts like the National Redistricting Action Fund, which aims to end partisan gerrymandering, or groups like Sister District, which organizes volunteers to elect Democrats to state legislative seats. You can find your local candidate and volunteer. In local races, whatever time or money you have to give will go far.
Growing up, I often heard it said that racism hurts white people, too. That always seemed like a line; white supremacy, in all its many forms, has of course protected and glorified white people. After reporting on state governments, though, I now understand that it’s true. As long as one major political party is simultaneously the party of overt racist rhetoric and disenfranchising voters and eroding public health and stalling action on climate change, racism does threaten us all.
Meaghan Winter is a magazine writer and author of All Politics is Local: Why Progressives Must Fight for the States
Whichever party wins biggest in state races in November will be able to tip the political scales until 2031