Republican Leaders: Don’t Ignore Race Issues







1) Realize you are at a disadvantage. You have more to prove when it comes to offering solutions to minority communities, therefore, you have to work harder at it. This means spending more time in minority communities, listening to their concerns, and developing relationships.

2) Be sensitive to the concerns of minorities. Words can be just as important as policies. When Rick Santorum flubbed his words in a debate and said “Mexican” when he meant to say “illegal immigrant,” it probably went unnoticed by most gringos like myself. But, Mexican-Americans noticed it and they were hurt buy it. Everyone makes mistakes, of course, but I believe that if Santorum were more sensitive to the frustrations Latinos feel about how they are often stereotyped, he would not have made that mistake.

3) Get rid of majority-minority districts. Since the 1990 census, states, with the approval of the Supreme court, have been creating majority-minority districts — congressional and state legislature districts in which a majority, or a plurality, of residents are racial or ethnic minorities. The goal was to increase the number of minorities in legislatures. It worked. These districts have been represented by minorities and more minorities have served in Congress and state legislatures.

There were, though, two other consequences. First, majority-minority districts helped Republicans get elected in districts surrounding majority-minority districts. While majority-minority districts have been represented by Democrats, they also served to decrease the proportion of Democrats in all the surrounding districts. (This is a gerrymandering technique known as “packing.”)

Second, and this is the main point for the purposes of this article, majority-minority districts made all the surrounding Republican districts more white. This means that for two decades the Republican Party has had leaders rising through its ranks that never needed to appeal to minority communities to get elected. I strongly suspect this is one reason that the Republican Party today seems so inept at speaking to the concerns of racial and ethnic minorities.

Since both political parties have been harmed in some way by majority-minority districts, can we, therefore, agree to a bipartisan effort to get rid of them?

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