Political agitators who use “Al Sharpton rhetoric” are in a stronger position today because “spineless Republicans” have supported racial gerrymandering — thus ensuring the election of divisive figures, said a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
Abigail Thernstrom, the commission’s vice chair, made the comments during a panel discussion entitled “Trumping the Race Card” at a conservative summit in Washington, D.C., on Saturday.
The far-left political orientation of the Congressional Black Caucus is in part “a gift of the Republican Party,” Thernstrom argued.
Instead of standing in principled opposition to the gerrymandering provisions folded into the Voting Rights Act last year, Republican lawmakers, in her view, placed a greater premium on passing the bill — and thus securing credit for their stand on civil rights.
The irony of nonracial conservatives saying these things is that racial gerrymandering helped the Republicans win the House for the dozen years they held it. With the racial gerrymandering, most blacks are segregated into their own district, and in the mostly white districts, white liberal Democrats couldn’t win, because their racial base had their own party.
[...] part of the reasons why Republicans are losing big in the House over the last two cycles. These racially gerrymandered districts had the net effect of also creating white districts where white liberals had no hope of [...]