Great White
USA Today laments the lack of black and Hispanic governors.

By John J. Miller, national political reporter
January 22, 2002 9:05 a.m.

or a newspaper that has taken racial bean counting to new levels, the sea of smiling white faces in the graphic accompanying yesterday's top story in USA Today was a shocker. But then that was the point, as the paper made clear in its MLK Day headline: "These are America's governors. No blacks. No Hispanics."

Reporter Kathy Kiely begins her article this way: "It's a fact so obvious and so widely accepted that it's not even a political issue. But if the U.S. Senate and the National Governors' Association were private clubs, their membership rosters would be a scandal. They're virtually lily white."

There's an equally obvious fact that somehow eluded Kiely, however, and it's that the Senate and NGA in fact aren't private clubs — the rules of membership are totally different and so are our expectations of who may belong. (By the way, why is it acceptable to use the expression "lily white" when it is presumably not acceptable to say the NBA is "black as night"?)

Kiely runs through a series of explanations for why so few blacks and Hispanics are governors and senators. She cites "plain old prejudice" as one reason — and then quotes none other than Rep. Bobby Rush of Illinois. "Only way an African-American can become a member of the Senate is by some kind of fluke," says Rush, who Kiely describes as "a former Black Panther."

Hmmm. Could it be that most voters aren't keen on elevating politicians such as Rush — left-wing activists who have very little to offer the ordinary voting public?

Kiely cites the Voting Rights Act of 1965 as a key to the success of minority politicians. She's correct to do this — though not for the reasons she states: "The act opened the doors of state legislatures and the U.S. House of Representatives by allowing lawmakers to design legislative and congressional districts likely to elect minorities."

Wrong. The 1965 law removed the systematic voting prohibitions blacks faced throughout the South — an important step to increasing the number of minority officeholders. What it didn't do, though, was allow the sort of gerrymandering that Kiely later credits with electing several dozen blacks and Hispanics to the House of Representatives. That impulse came later, from amendments that distorted the original law. But even now race-driven redistricting is problematic: The Supreme Court has struck down a number of districts whose bizarre maps were drawn with the specific purpose of creating safe seats for blacks and Hispanics.

Kiely makes it seem that if there were only more gerrymandering, there would be a better "farm team" of minority officeholders who might then advance as senators and governors. But this is exactly wrong. What gerrymandering has done is create a generation of Bobby Rushes and Maxine Waters — radical-left politicians who have no ability or even desire to build multiracial voting coalitions that can succeed at the statewide level.

And that's the most important — and unstated — reason why there weren't any black or Hispanic faces illustrating yesterday's cover story in USA Today.