America is supposed to be a “color blind” society. Each of us is supposed to be judged on his or her merits. As Dr. Martin Luther King urged in 1963, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
Unfortunately, that isn’t happening in California for redistricting boundaries for federal, state and local offices. Some examples:
The OC Register reported Nov. 30 on a coalition of residents writing to the California’s Citizens Redistricting Commission, which sets the boundaries for legislative and congressional districts. The residents wrote “to oppose splitting the San Gabriel Valley into two districts and separating northeast Orange County, which both have higher shares of Korean and Chinese American residents. Such a change, commenters wrote, would dilute voices from those AAPI communities.” AAPI is Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders.
On Dec. 1, a student wrote in New University, UCI’s official newspaper, that preliminary drafts of districts for state Assembly and Senate would divide Little Saigon in two, meaning “not only would it completely change the structure of a majority of Orange County politics, but it would also severely affect the Asian American voting bloc.”
For the five seats on the Orange County Board of Supervisors, the board itself determines boundaries. The Register reported, “Voting rights advocates say they’re pleased the new boundaries would outline a Latino-majority District 2 anchored by Santa Ana.”
Many more examples could be sited. But these actions clearly violate the law of California and of the United States.
Article I, Section 31(a) of the California Constitution is clear: “The State shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.”
Splitting up districts for elected office “on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin” obviously is a violation of that section.
The federal Voting Rights Act of 1965 stipulated, in Section 2: “No voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure shall be imposed or applied by any State or political subdivision to deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.”
It was designed finally to implement the 14th and 15th Amendments passed after the Civil War as part of Reconstruction. The latter read, in Section 1, “The right of citizens of the United States to
vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”
The fact is, though, we are all Americans. We’re supposed to come together in all our diversity to work things out. We’re not supposed to separate into “blocks” of votes based on race, religion, color or anything else.
The state redistricting commission and the OC Board of Supervisors have until the end of the year to finalize their maps. We urge them to discard the practice of designing these maps based on racial, religious, demographic or other factors besides simply drawing lines to make sure every person is represented equally.
