NAACP Presentation before NCGA

Presentation Made Before

NC General Assembly Redistricting Committee

 

July 7, 2011

 

Raleigh, North Carolina

 

For More Information:            Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, President, 919-394-8137

                                                 Mrs. Amina Turner, Executive Director, 919-682-4700

                                                Atty. Jennifer Marsh, Legal Redress Coordinator, 919-682-4700

 

NAACP Raises Major Challenges to Congressional Redistricting and Will Call for  Justice Department and Court Review if the Ultra-Conservative Leadership of the General Assembly Persists in Voting to Approve the Discriminatory Gerrymandering in the Current Redistricting Maps

 

I am Rev. Dr. William J Barber, State President of the North Carolina NAACP, member of National Board of the NAACP and I stand here representing 120+ units and thousands of members. As you may know, the NAACP was one of the major architects of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

 

            It is with mixed feelings that I appear before this committee in order to present our response to the draft of the Congressional Redistricting map which this committee prepared. I understand that you already have the votes and commitments from your party's colleagues to enact this map. While some say politically this enactment is a done deal, there still may be a review done by the US Department of Justice and the Courts. Nevertheless, since we have been given an opportunity to place our opposition to this plan on the record, this we shall do.

 

            You have chosen to prepare a plan which is bold and bodacious in its attempt to stack and pack as many racial minorities in the same districts in an effort to gain a partisan political advantage for future years for the Republican Party. The plan presented by this committee violates every generally accepted and recognized redistricting principle as mandated by the United States Supreme Court in Shaw v. Reno, Shaw v. Hunt and Miller v. Johnson.

 

            In Miller v. Johnson, a case which discussed an effort by the Republican-controlled United States Department of Justice to create "Black Max" congressional districts, the United States Supreme Court condemned the unnatural and contrived "stacking  and packing" of African-American into separate voting districts in order to maximize the number of Republican congressional districts. That Court declared that an intent to establish a racial basis for the creation of a particular district can be proved by showing irregular and unnatural district shapes or by a review of the stated legislative purpose to segregate minority voters into particular districts.

 

            In presenting this claim, it can be established that the drawing of the particular lines which you have drawn defy and subordinate every traditional race-neutral district principle. Those principles include, but are not limited to, compactness, contiguity, respect for political subdivisions and/or communities of shared interests.  

 

            The map you have drawn subverts each of these redistricting principles to an illegal consideration of race. What is obvious in your plan is that African-Americans have been removed from many districts and packed into the proposed 1st, 4th and 12th. This packing and stacking was not required by the 1965 Voting Rights Act, but I guess that the courts will have to determine this issue. For example, the 12th district, which is represented by Congressman Mel Watt, has been packed with just about every African-American who lives around the I-85 corridor from Greensboro to Charlotte. The proposed African-American composition of that district has increased from 42% to over 50%. This increase in the African-American presence is due to the "bleaching out" of African-Americans from the surrounding congressional districts.

 

            Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act was adopted in 1965 to outlaw discriminatory voting practices that had been responsible for the widespread disenfranchisement of African Americans. In North Carolina, 40 of our 100 counties are covered by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act due to past harms done to our minority population.

 

The Rucho-Lewis Congressional map disregards this long and painful history for five counties covered by Section 5 of the VRA. In drawing this map, Gates, Washington, Beaufort, Craven, and Wayne Counties were removed from the 1st Congressional District.

 

This district was developed intentionally to overcome years of disenfranchisement and voter exclusion. Removing these counties from District 1 dilutes the voting power of these Section 5 counties to elect the Congressperson of their choice. We have seen these tactics before. When radical and extreme politicians seek to consolidate their political power, we remember that it was from George White in 1900, after which racist extremists took over the NC General Assembly and disenfranchised African-Americans (a third of North Carolina's population at the time) until Eva Clayton in 1990, a total of 90 years, before African-Americans in North Carolina could elect a Congressperson of their choice. 

 

District 1, represented by Congressman G.K. Butterfield (Dem) lost population and must expand in order to comply with the one-person, one-vote requirement. This could have been accomplished by expanding the district as far as necessary to meet the population requirement. Instead, Rucho and Lewis removed five key counties covered by Section 5 of the VRA and extended this rural eastern district all the way into Wake County.

 

Drawing part of downtown Raleigh into a district composed primarily of rural Eastern North Carolina counties is inappropriate. Removing five Eastern counties that are traditional communities of shared interest is also inappropriate. The result is a dilution of the voting power and influence of the people of Gates, Washington, Beaufort, Craven and Wayne Counties. Exactly what the Voting Rights Act of 1965 intends to protect.

 

This map does not show concern for African American and minority political power or upholding civil rights. It is merely an instrument of partisan power to suppress and dilute the vote of minorities across the state. Adoption of this map takes our state backwards at a time we need to be moving forward.

 

            In North Carolina, African-Americans have repeatedly been the victims of racial gerrymandering in order to achieve some political advantage. Thus we understand what you are doing and I stand here today to say to you that we voice our objection and indignation. In the past, our influence in the election of congressional representatives has been muted. The General Assembly is engaged in this unseemly effort to segregate African-Americans and submerge our influence into two congressional districts. This is being done for the sole purpose of creating ten districts in which Republicans can elect its members. In so doing, this committee has totally abandoned any effort to adhere to sound and traditional districting principles and has thus perverted the redistricting process. Shame, Shame, Shame On You. This is regressive, this is wrong and we will see you in court.

 

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