Those angry from having had their privilege disappear who insist on keeping themselves locked in the past will prove a mere distraction to the big question those who wish to progress to the future will have to answer in Louisiana getting right constitutionally with its congressional districts.
Last week, the Senate Governmental and Affairs Committee started vetting various bills to accomplish this, with resolution anticipated this week. This has become necessary after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the current map an unconstitutional racial gerrymander because no compelling reason – that is, intended discrimination merely because of race – existed for race to be the primary element in its drawing.
This quest has upset black Democrats in particular, the most spleen-venting of the bunch being state Sen. Gary Carter. He caterwauled bitterly in his questions as a committee member, for the obvious reason that black Democrats no longer could use race as a fig leaf to draw districts favoring them but also because his uncle, Democrat Rep. Troy Carter, could have an even money chance of losing his seat with a map that had one or no majority-minority districts planned out, as opposed to the current two.
So upset, and perhaps calculating, was Gary Carter that he sought the last refuge of a scoundrel, declaring actions by Republican state Sen. Jay Morris akin to racism because of multiple bills Morris had sponsored that, in essence, would eliminate extra black officeholders to prevent unsustainable duplication of services in Orleans Parish and to reduce the M/M districts. It’s an old and tiresome ploy that assumes racial equality comes by forced outcomes, not by enforcing equal opportunity.
Illustrative of this mindset that a quota system should prevail in electing congressmen where content of character doesn’t matter, opponents of bills that reduced M/M districts that spoke included all four black congressmen in the state’s recent history. They included Carter, but also Prisoner #72121-083, once known as William Jefferson, convicted of corruption and imprisoned; Cedric Richmond, who while employed by the White House crashed his car in what looked like intoxicated driving but whom New Orleans police mysteriously refused to handle that way; and Cleo Fields, who was an unindicted co-conspirator in the trial that sent Prisoner #03128-095, known then as Democrat former Gov. Edwin Edwards, to prison.
At least for Troy Carter’s sake, the bill that emerged the most likely to be advanced was SB 121 by Morris, which improves Troy Carter’s odds of retaining his seat as opposed to that of Fields, who at present represents the unconstitutional district. That map isn’t much different from the one in effect prior to the unconstitutional map.
And it isn’t SB 116 by Morris, which would leave no M/M districts with the highest proportion in one of about 40 percent. In fact, according to traditional reapportionment criteria, that might score the best of all alternatives including the last two maps in effect.
Morris is to be commended for stumping for these bills in taking much political heat by cranks who pretend it’s 1966 instead of 2026, who try to explain away their failures at leadership as a plot by wild-eyed racists. And the committee this week should not let itself become distracted over theatrics designed primarily to help an existing failed black Democrat leadership for whom this is more about their attempt to retain power than it is to help people, black and white.
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