Jun 28 2006
Supreme Court Still Not There
The Supreme Court’s ruling on the Texas redistricting issue shows two things: the court is closer to general conservative and American values; the court is still not quite there yet. The good news is a state’s right to organize itself has been re-affirmed:
The Supreme Court upheld most of Texas’s Republican-drafted 2003 congressional redistricting plan yesterday in a ruling that could prompt majority parties in other states to redraw political maps to their advantage.
The problem is the court still established racism as a controlling factor over Americanism. Minorities who wish to be treated as equals need to want to be treated as equals. But this is not the case it seems. This part of the ruling just doesn’t make any sense to the vision expoused by the great Dr. Martin Luther King:
By a vote of 5 to 4, the court ruled that a sprawling West Texas district represented by Henry Bonilla (R) violates the Voting Rights Act because it diluted the voting power of Latinos.
Is it the state of Texas or the state of Latino-Texans? Is it the United States of America or is there one America set aside for the purely unscientific and arbitrary definition of a minority (at the genetic level there is not a clean and clear difference among the races which meld from one population to another)? Is the court saying their needs to be a Latino-America? Why does a group get special treatment due to biological genes and another group doesn’t? Not to mention the fact ‘Latino’ is not as much a race as much as a culture, which competes with the “American” culture (which is inclusive of all races, creeds and cultures).
The result is clear. Rights based on some arbitrary grouping of Americans into subset groupings needs to be eliminated since these are unconstitutional on their face. Being in the minority is a natural occurance in democracies. Duh! When did that become un-democratic?
How many generations will we have to be guided by ethinic/cultural balance. There has been enough time already for any disadvantaged group to have picked itself up, gathered their people and bettered their own destiny. If they have or continue to do less, should the country as a whole be endlessly shotgun group punished for their lack of progress and lack of will to better themselves. If this is to be the measure, we are in for a very long stretch of mediocrity.
I find it odd that the SCOTUS would name the one district that is? Primarily Hispanic and has a Hispanic congressman, Henry Bonilla. The problem with Bonilla is that he is a (God, here it comes) Republican. His district includes San Antonio (wanna take a guess and the population breakdown there ?) and the border counties.
And if the SCOTUS was truely worried about minorities in Texas, they would have had to concern themselves with the white vote as last year Texas became a minority-majority state (or is it majority-minority, I always get the two confused).
How can the voting rights of Latino-Texans be diluted when the majority of voters in that district ARE Latino-Texans? Could someone please explain that to me?
So now we have affirmative action in voting rights? No more districts judged on population? At that rate, Chicago should have no Republicans, ever.
And when the white population becomes the minority as it is in Texas, is the white population then guaranteed the benefits that come with minority status?
It seems that you can be a minority as long as that minority is not white therefore the laws are based not on equality, but on color preference.
Anyone care to take a shot at this for me because I sure the hell don’t understand it.