The percentage of black legislators in positions of power in southern state legislatures is the lowest it has been since the passage of the Voting Rights Act. The ability to draw legislative districts has been a key instrument in accomplishing this.
Here's a take on the strategy:
Republicans in control of redistricting have two goals: the defeat of white Democrats, and the creation of safe districts for Republicans. They have achieved both of these goals by increasing the number of districts likely to elect an African-American. Black voters are gerrymandered out of districts represented by whites of both parties, making the Democratic incumbent weaker and the Republican incumbent stronger.
Take Mississippi. In the state’s 2012 redistricting, all of the decisively black legislative districts – where 60 percent or more of the voters are African-American – have been preserved, and four new majority-black districts have been created. This, in turn, has allowed Republicans to reduce the percentage of blacks in districts where Republican incumbents had close contests in Mississippi’s 2011 off-year elections.
While increasing the number of blacks elected to state legislatures, Republicans have been effectively implementing their long-range goal of decimating the number of white Democrats. Depending on local demographics, this has been achieved in two ways.
Where possible, Republican redistricting strategists have reduced the number of blacks in white Democratic legislative districts in order to render the incumbent vulnerable to Republican challenge. In other areas of the state, where it has not been not possible to “bleach” a district, Republicans have sharply increased the percentage of blacks to over 50 percent in order to encourage a successful black challenge to the white Democratic incumbent.
In private discussions, Republicans in the South talk explicitly about their goal of turning the Democratic Party into a black party, and in many Southern states they have succeeded. African-American legislators make up the majority of state House and Senate Democratic caucuses in most of the Southern states.
