The Public Policy / Affirmative Voting Rights
Eastland, Terry
acknowledgment of its right to rule over a united Vietnam. In my judgment, our formal recognition of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam as the particular political expression of the people of...
...1761761761 THE REAL WORLD PATRIOTIC MATERIALISM The lily-white suburbs aren't...
...In an NBC-Associated Press public-opinion poll of blacks last year, 60 percent of the respondents said that blacks in America are "better off" than ten years ago versus 17 percent who said blacks were "worse off...
...The Association of Southeast Asian nations has long since called for a zone of neutrality in that heterogeneous part of the world...
...E-?, THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR APRIL 1982 27...
...Thus, no one following the extension legislation could have confidently guessed what was happening to Section 2. Meanwhile, the White House, reticent about taking a position on the extension legislation, did not object to the rewriting of Section 2 until two weeks after the legislation had passed the House, and then only very quietly...
...Any voting change that fails to maximize the chances of electing minority group candidates has been instantly suspect, and in most cases rejected...
...A two-Viemam arrangement would be to the benefit of every concerned power save Moscow and the current Hanoi l ruling group...
...Second, there has been in some quarters a strange silence about what the possible repercussions of a revised Section 2 might be...
...Call or Write Director of Admissions Christendom College Route 3, Box 87 Front Royal, VA22630 703-636-2908 Internships with P.A.C.'s and congressmen provide first-hand political experience in Washington On-campus Practica with nationally known political leaders Classical and Catholic courses in Politics and Economics A Major Program, leading to the B.A...
...And people living in small apartments...
...AFFIRMATIVE VOTING RIGHTS Extension of key enforcement provisions of the Voting Rights Act, scheduled to expire August 6, has n e v e r been in doubt...
...Blacks are still proportionately less likely to live there than whites, but the trend is clear...
...To order, or for a copy of our catalogue, write: LibertyPress/LibertyClassws 7440 North Shadeland, Dept...
...Civil rights lobbyists started out last year by saying tha:t they wanted the Voting Rights Act extended as is, no changes allowed...
...The favorite language--whether of the House Judiciary Committee report, ~ the Post editorial page, or civil rights lobbyists --is that the Section 2 revision would merely "clarify" the law (and, thus, the Fifteenth Amendment) by "reL bertyhess L rtyClass;s The Wealth of Nations (In Two Volumes) By Adam Smith The Glasgow Edition General Editors: R. H. Campbell and A. S. Skinner Textual Editor: W. B. Todd A softcover version of the edition commissioned by the University of Glasgow and published by Oxford University Press to celebrate the bicentenary of The Wealth o f Nations in 1976...
...Like the Fifteenth Amendment, Section 2 requires that an intent to discriminate be demonstrated to prove a violation...
...The creation of the Socialist Republic incorporating all of Vietnam under one government as the consequence of such aggression was in violation of international law and should not be legitimated...
...Consequently, black registration began to increase by the thousands...
...At the least the Post should read its own files...
...Fourth, there has been a refusal to understand what the Supreme Court was doing in Mobile...
...Which is not a bad description of whites, either...
...Blacks have made progress in America...
...No state would henceforth be threatened by Hanoi, and military expenditures in Southeast Asia would be reduced...
...In addition, minimum wages went way up, Social Security has also escalated sharply and in a way that particularly helps the elderly poor...
...1 is one of the parttctpants in the Polittcs Program at Christendom...
...YOU CAN LEARN TO MAKE IT HAPPEN IN THE POLITICS PROGRAM cHRISTENDOM 'COLLEGE Congressman Robert Dornan [R., Calif...
...These losers and their allies--the ACLU, the NAACP, and others--have declared without qualification that Mobile would keep them from successfully challenging hundreds of at-large systems...
...Code...
...Amazingly enough, as extension legislation moved through the House of Representatives not one voice was raised objecting to the Justice Department's handling of Section 5 cases...
...This article is adapted from Mr...
...Courts will probably examine Section 2 claims in terms of "vote dilution," and because the majority of the nation's cities and many counties elect their representatives in an at-large manner, hundreds of lawsuits might ensue...
...Afrer all, in the last two decades a vast array of services has been introduced to help the poor: Medicaid, rent supplements, food stamps, to name but a few...
...Remember, that's where June Allyson and Fred MacMurray wanted to get the little white house with the picket fence...
...Suburbs aren't like that...
...It applies to all states, not just those covered by Section 5. It also applies to any discriminatory voting practice that might have been established prior to 1965, no matter how long ago its adoption...
...Most folks there own a spot of green...
...The House version of the Voting Rights Act extension is a towering monument to this principle...
...Now a violation would be established if, as the committee's report explains, "the alleged unlawful conduct has the effect or impact of discrimination on the basis of race, color, or membership in a language minority group...
...In trying to justify a Section 2 "effects" test, the House Judiciary Committee, in the most disingenuous sentence in its report, cites Attorney General Katzenbach's 1965 congressional testimony that Section 2 would apply to any voting practice whose "purpose or effect was to deny or abridge the right to vote on account of race or color...
...that it "cut[s] down dozens, perhaps hundreds, of legal challenges that would have been made against existing systems of government or multimember legislative districts...
...But in the short term, the hurricane swirls into the vacuum...
...Perhaps this September the Reagan Administration should challenge Hanoi's credentials to sit in the United Nations...
...When he and his colleagues raised objections on the House floor during the two debates on the bill held October 2 and 5, their points barely received passing mention in the Post...
...That unfortunately still leaves about 30 percent of whites who don't like blacks, but the numbers have changed in a big way...
...White attitudes toward blacks have also changed...
...Since late January, when the Senate Judiciary Committee began considering extension" legislation, Section 2 has received wider attention...
...To force an answer is to expose unquestioned racial assumptions--that blacks should vote for blacks, that blacks should represent blacks, that there must be a " b l a c k " view of things (and a Hispanic one, an Indian one, an Asian one)--which no one, at least not in the polite world of Washington, is willing to defend explicitly...
...The white noose has become a polka-dot scarf...
...0 0 0 Christendom College Is a four-year, co-ed, solidly Catholic liberalarts college located In Northern Virginia, with a 74-acre campus on the Shenandoah River...
...So, too, in the suburbs...
...So~idly trained, be bases his political activity squarely on the natural law...
...The principle in both instances is that voting is a group exercise defined by race...
...Softcover only--S11.00 the set...
...In my judgment, our formal recognition of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam as the particular political expression of the people of South Vietnam is precluded by Article Five of the United Nation's declaration on aggression which says, "No territorial or special advantage resulting from aggression is or shall be recognized as lawfuL" Hanoi's 1975 invasion of South Vietnam not only violated the Paris Agreements on Ending the War but constituted an act of aggression under international law, which defines jt as the use of armed force by a state against the territorial integrity and political independence of another state...
...But consider this: After Mobile wasdecided in 1980 the Post commented that the ruling "derails the legal theory that civil rights lawyers had hoped would force a shift from at-large elections to ward or district elections in cities all over the country...
...Its economy and its values both erode...
...All significant emigre Vietnamese nationalist leaders who have been consulted have accepted the broad outlines of such a proposal, except that many would prefer to have a unified neutral Vietnam instead of two separate states...
...Do well, move o u t . Over the long haul it works out pretty well...
...the 1980 data shows 23 percent...
...Try to visualize it: Suppose 100 blacks lived in a " b a d " inner-city slum neighborhood in, say, 1960...
...Whitney Young of the Urban League once told me that Martin Luther King had told him, "Never forget that Negroes in America are materialistic, religious, and patriotic...
...Press treatment was no better...
...However, both Vietnams should also be committed to a legal regime o f international neutrality along the lines of Switzerland and Austria...
...There is no shortage of doctors in suburbia...
...And despite opposition efforts by an embattled and tiny group of representatives, the House voted to make " b a i l - o u t " from Section 5, already difficult, virtually impossible...
...This question assumes that blacks will--and shou/d--vote for blacks...
...Amendment context...
...In the society as a whole, there is no question that blacks are still behind whites...
...In fact, the House voted not simply to extend Section 5, heretofore merely a temporary provision, but to engrave it permanently into the U.S...
...Hanoi will never agree to the end of its dominion until force of arms leaves it with no other choice...
...In an at-large election, a citizen can cast votes in every election, and thus influence every outcome...
...In the first few years after the act's passage, the dream of an integrated .vote seemed plausible...
...Butler, a member of the committee, composed a dissent for the committee report, but it went unreported in the Washington Post...
...There would again be two Vietnams with both Laos and Cambodia as independent and non-aligned nations...
...This would be a splendid alternative...
...The issue seems to be in the hands of the Senate, but fortunately there may be an easy way out for all those senators nervous about opposing the House bill...
...Blacks were denied that equal opportunity in America for centuries...
...In rewriting Section 2, the House Judiciary Committee has dropped this requirement...
...Invariably, the Justice Department has asked whether any such change would "dilute" the voting strength of minority groups (blacks, in most cases...
...Accordingly, as Erler said, the most reasonable and effective way for the Court to do this was" to restore the authority of those cases requiring proof of discriminatory purposes as a necessary prerequisite to a claim of voting discrimination...
...Two thoughts occur to me about these developments, one about blacks in suburbs, another about blacks in slums...
...When that opportunity was made available, millions of blacks took advantage of it...
...The blacks moving to the suburbs are machinists, policemen, salesmen, teachers, computer programmers, and auto workers, many of them in families with both husband and wife working damn hard to make ends meet, with children who are, or will be, attending college at almost the same rate as whites...
...In fact, on January 26 the Post casually wrote: "Opponents of [Section 2] say this would require courts to strike down any voting system that didn't result in proportional representation...
...Not true...
...Motn'le, as Edward J. Erler of the National: Humanities Center pointed out in Senate subcommittee hearings in January, called for a halt t o readings of the Constitution and the Voting Rights Act that would not only allow but require proportional representation by race...
...All in all, it's a pretty good statistical index of where, to use an ugly phrase from market research, the up-scale people live...
...Disproportionally, the aged, the unemployed, the ill-employed, the sick, the broken families, as well as the social and criminal derelicts--winos, bums, junkies, muggers...
...If opportunity long denied becomes available, if many blacks take advantage of opportunity, if they accordingly leave the bad neighborhoods in which they lived--what happens...
...All orders from outside the United States must be prepaid in U.S...
...It assumes that proportional representation by race will result in greater legislative benefits for blacks and other minorities, although for this to happen minority representatives would have to form coalitions not based or...
...And some of the whites are just moving to farther-out suburbs to be away from blacks...
...Instead, taking its cue from a 1969 Supreme Court decision, it turned to a new issue-the prevention of what it called "vote dilution.' ' Terry East~and is editor of the Virginian-Piiot ofNorfolk, Virginia...
...Also includes extensive notes covering historical facts and Smith's reference...
...Moreover, in a series of other Fourteenth Amendment cases involving racial issues, the Court has always demanded a showing of discriminatory intent or purpose...
...In the course of 20 years, half move out, either to suburbs or to better in-city neighborhoods...
...Conversely, those Indochinese who would bring a measure of humanity and justice to their countries have nothing left but an appeal to Heaven--and its corollary, the violent sfruggle for political liberty...
...In conformity with the original purpose of the Voting Rights Act--to improve black access to the polls--racially discriminatory roadblocks began falling wherever they existed, mainly, of course, in the South...
...The only question has beertlth e f0rm~extens/on should take, and the-current betting would have to favor the Version overwhelmingly passed last fall by t h e House of Representatives, a bill that now has more than 60 Senate supporters...
...The proper approach for peace in Indochina is neutralism under the political formula reached in 1954 during the Geneva conference...
...The 1970 census showed 18 Ben J. Wattenberg is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute...
...For there would no longer be any reason to hope that the act might facilitate a more integrated vote--one in which voters define their interests in terms other than their own race and ethnicity...
...Those are opinions, but those views are backed up by data concerning housing, jobs, and education--and income too, although the data there gets tricky...
...During the same time the number of blacks went up by 44 percent...
...The House bill thus invites a sort of separate but equal politics--hardly what the architects of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 envisioned...
...Third, there has been an attempt to argue that Section 2, as revised, is consistent with the legislative history of the Voting Rights Act...
...As disturbing as the revision in Section 2 is, very few members of the House found reason to object--four, if my count is accurate...
...And crime...
...You don't have to love "big government" to accept the fact that these programs have helped poor people become less poor...
...Wattenberg's hi-monthly United Feature Syndicate column...
...By 1978 the white Americans holding that essentially nonracist view had climbed to 70 percent...
...What happens is that in a s t r a n g e way both the appearance and reality by Ben J. Wattenberg of those worst neighborhoods become even worse...
...We pay book rate postage on prepaid orders...
...My sense is that blacks are making progress because of their own hard work in a society that rather suddenly "opened up" for them...
...today, there are six million...
...Further, the House bill unfairly implies that at-large systems are inherently inferior to district electoral schemes...
...Oddly enough, that same very healthy move to the suburbs has created bigger-than-ever problems in the worst areas of the big-city slums...
...As it worked out, "preclearance" has been required even in changes involving annexations, reapportionments, and shifts from ward to at-large voting...
...Finally, none of the proponents of Section 2 have addressed the most important question of all--what kind of society would the House bill help create...
...It contradicts what Justice Stevens stated in Mobile, that " t h e r e is no national interest in creating an incentive to define political groups by racial char26 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR APRIL 1982 acter...
...and that it "avoid[s] the logical terminal point of those challenges: that election district lines must be drawn to give proportional representation to minorities...
...But Katzenbach was referring to practices affecting equal access to the ballot--not, as the committee report would have us believe, to "vote dilution...
...Prepayment is required on.all orders noi lbr resale...
...Civil rights leaders have turned the House bill into an emotional issue, urging its passage with sermons, marches, and so on...
...As Justice Stevens wrote in his opinion in Mobile, "The fact is that the Court has sternly set its face against the claim, however phrased, that the Constitution somehow guarantees proportional representation...
...Bi, t whatever it is called, or, as Justice Stevens might say, however it is phrased, there is no difference in principle between preventing "vote dilution" and working toward proportional representation...
...Who stays...
...No reader of the House J udiciary Committee report can fail to grasp that Section 2 was rewritten to make winners out of the losers in Mobile...
...If this version should prevail, however, the great promise of the Voting Rights Act would be tragically denied...
...in a district election, a citizen is confined to influencing only his district's outcome...
...That explains a lot...
...What proponents of a revised Section 2 prefer is to go about maximizing black and minority voting strength by carving out black majority districts, all the while protesting that proportional'representation is not the object of this game...
...It also places a premium on what amounts to the maintenance of segregation, since integration makes it more difficult to draw districts by race...
...But the voices of Thomas Bliley, Caldwell Butler, Dick Cheney, and Jim Collins were merely crying in the Washington wilderness...
...It is ungracious and unfair to suggest that those black advances were simply bestowed by an almighty government passing out goodies to assuage earlier guilt...
...But it's also true that suburbia was, is, and will be the locale of the American dream...
...Nevertheless, the Post, for one, has said not a word about the rash of lawsuits that would likely result from the House version of Section 2. Nor has it noted that the purpose of these lawsuits would be to effect proportional representation by race, or something close to it...
...Interestingly, the statistical portrait not only of leavers but of stayers may have improved...
...In Mississippi--to cite one of the most heartening r e s u l t s - - t h e percentage of blacks registering to vote lumped from seven percent the year before the act was passed to almost 60 percent in 1967...
...Indeed, there would be good reason to fear that the polarization of society along racial and ethnic lines would increase dramatically...
...Few politicians have had the courage to ask many questions, and the Reagan Administration is, given its handling of tax exemption for racially discriminatory schools, in a tenuous position to rally opposition...
...Please allow 4 to 6 weeks for delivery...
...Now, it would be terribly misleading to suggest that these six million black people are all grilling steaks in the spacious backyards of four-bedroom split-levels with full two-car garages...
...And despite all the recent talk about cuts in " t h e programs," the reality of black life in America has much improved in recent years...
...The move to the suburbs shouldn't surprise anyone...
...There were about four million blacks in suburbs in 1970...
...The census results show that from 1970 to 1980 the number of whites living in suburbs went up by 13 percent...
...Soon enough, however;, the Justice Department,: which has enforcement authority for the act, ceased to be concerned with ensuring equal political opportunity...
...Although the Court has on occasion used the "effects" standard that the House now wants written into Section 2, it has done so only when considering voting rights claims in a Fourteenth I I Are you in favor of protecting family rights...
...To put the matter another way, schemes that "dilute" the vote of minorities will immediately draw fire and probably be outlawed...
...Contains a general introduction and textual schedules of variations between editions as well as extensive cross-referencing to Smith's other works...
...The problems with Section 5 are THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR APRIL 1982 small, however, compared with what the House has done to Section 2. A permanent provision of the Voting Rights Act, Section 2 is a codification of the Fifteenth Amendment, which prohibits the adoption of any election law or procedure that denies or hampers a person's right to vote on account of race or color...
...A56 Indianapolis, IN 46250 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR APRIL 1982 25 turning" it to the pre.Mobile standard...
...percent of blacks living in suburbs...
...But even now, despite some debate on the issue, there is a conspicuous lack of candor among the defenders of a revised Section 2. To begin with, few proponents of the House version of extension openly admit that Section 2 has been rewritten to overturn a two-year-old Supreme Court ruling in Mobile v. Bolden which held that a Section 2 violation requires a demonstration of discriminatory intent...
...Historically, when Americans become better off, they move to the suburbs...
...As a result, it is likely that Section 5 jurisdictions will henceforth have virtually no hope of escaping Justice Department pressure to achieve what amounts to proportional representation by race...
...Overturning the Supreme Court seems to depend on the political ends being served...
...The implications of this "strengthening" of Section 2 are plain enough...
...There is also little doubt that they have been catching up...
...A neighborhood whose bright, ambitious, and stable members have moved upward and onward is a sick area, even if the statistics are better...
...The ones who leave are the ambitious, the educated, the healthy, the well-employed, the leaders of the church, and the Boy Scouts...
...A Louis Harris poll from 1963 showed that about half of the whites in America (47 percent) would be upset "only a little" or "not at a l l " if "blacks moved into this neighborhood...
...One can only conclude that everyone recognizes that such representation would violate the basic premises upon which the nation was founded...
...The move-to-suburbia numbers show that quite clearly...
...Section 5, always said to be a temporary measure tl-.at would ease the nation into an era in which race won't matter, has become a permanent measure designed to ensure that any new election guidelines will place a premium on skin color and ethnic background...
...Suffice to say, when conservatives try to "clarify" the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment as it might apply to fetuses, or when they try to " r e t u r n " to the status quo before Roe v. IVade, they are charged with attempting to undermine the very foundations of the Republic...
...Not true, as the Post might say...
...No one in this debate has declared himself in favor of proportional representation by race, at least not in public...
...On the other hand, these words from the past might be unsettling: They were voiced in partial sympathy with the Court's decision...
...Contrary to what defenders of the House extension contend, no Court decision has ever required anything other than an "intent" standard for Section 2 or the Fifteenth Amendment...
...2 4 i by Terry Eastland According to Section 5 of the act, nine Southern states and parts of thirteen others must "preclear" any changes in their ,coting procedures with the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department...
...race--precisely what the legislation would prevent voters from doing...
...Why would it violate these premises...
...dollars...
...It's where schools aide better...
...One Vietnam could be socialist, the other nationalist...
...But when you visit a neighborhood of worst-area-stayers, that is not what you sense or feel...
...They have poor people...
...Although it spent seven weeks in hearings, the House Judiciary Committee needed only one day to consider the revision to Section 2. Only three witnesses appeared, and all three favored the change...
...Any political unit--a city, say, or a county--with an at-large voting system that fails to elect minority candidates in approximate proportion to the number of their group in the general population will be vulnerable to a Section 2 lawsuit, and will probably be required to establish a district electoral scheme...
...For whatever solace it is, that seems to be the way social progress in America works, for blacks and for whites...
Vol. 15 • April 1982 • No. 4
