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1 i (2009)

handle is hein.amenin/aeiabfr0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Co nun i 4from [rontaflop revised aim of the act. Blacks came to be treated as politically different-entitled to inequality in the form of a unique political privilege. Majority-minority districts that reserved seats for blacks and Hispanics succeeded in integrating southern politics. By now, however, those districts may perversely limit the potential power of black officeholders. Max-black districts typically elect candidates to the left of most voters; those office- holders rarely run in majority-white settings. Such race-conscious districting discourages the development of centrist, post-racial candidates like Barack Obama (who was defeated when he stood for Congress in one such district). The Voting Rights Act has become a period piece that today serves to keep most black legislators clustered on the sidelines of American politics-precisely the opposite of what its framers intended. A radically revised law would better serve the political interests of all Americans-minority and white voters alike. Abigail Thernstrom is an adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and vice-chair of the United States Commission on Civil Rights. /uIJor PJjto, EM Fl DTIt I 74 Praise for RIGHTS AND by ABIGAIL THERNSTROM Abigail Thernstrom is simply the best writer and thinker we have on voting rights in America. Voting Rights-and Wrongs, the culmination of decades of research and thinking, is the watershed book that will reframe our thinking on minorities and the vote. This book is grounded in an irony: that race-specific voting policies designed to achieve racial equality in fact perpetuate racial inequality And now fate has conspired to reinforce Thernstroms thesis. Barack Obama's election makes it clear that minorities can now win in a political open market. This is the book we need to understand voting rights in post-Obama America. -SHELBY STEELE, Robert J. and Marion E. Oster Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution Abby Thernstrom has studied issues relating to race throughout her illustrious and academically productive career. America in Black and White, coauthored by her husband Stephan Thernstrom, is the gold standard for those who want to trace racial progress in America. Voting Rights-and Wrongs: The Elusive Questjor Racially Fair Elections will stand honorably alongside America in Black and White as an invaluable contribution to understanding how Americans' thinking about race has evolved. With the election of Barack Obama and reconsideration of the Voting Rights Act, this new work of scholarly excellence could not come at a better time. -WARD CONNERLY, president, American Civil Rights Institute It has become a shibboleth of moral fiber in America to support 'upholding the Voting Rights Act' as if forty-five years after 1965, there are still grimy bigots wait- ing to bar blacks from the voting booth as soon as the Feds turn their backs. Abigail Thernstrom makes a clean argument that the Voting Rights Act is today a brake on the progress that the civil rights movement is supposed to be about. -JOHN MCWHORTER, senior fellow, Manhattan Institute Z Merican Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research 1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20036 lCtn Afhietty hinge PUBLIC POLICY $30.00 RACIALLY FAIR ELECTIONS V(/t( RIGHTS- AND 5 ABIGAIL THERNSTROM The 1965 Voting Rights Act is the crown jewel of American civil rights legislation. Its passage marked the death knell of the Jim Crow South. But that was the beginning, not the end, of an important debate on race and representation in American democracy When is the distribution of political power racially fair? Who counts as a representative of black and Hispanic interests? How we answer such questions shapes our politics and public policy in profound but often unrecognized ways. The act' original aim was simple: Give African Americans the same political opportunity enjoyed by other citizens-the chance to vote, form polit- ical coalitions, and elect the candidates of their choice. But in the racist South, it soon became clear that access to the ballot would not, by itself, provide the political opportunity the statute promised. Most southern whites were unwilling to vote for black candidates, and southern states were ready to alter electoral systems to maintain white supremacy In this provocative book, Abigail Thernstrom argues that southern resistance to black politi- cal power began a process by which the act was radically revised both for good and ill. Congress, the courts, and the Justice Depart- ment altered the statute to ensure the election of blacks and Hispanics to legislative bodies ranging from school boards and county councils to the U.S. Congress. Proportional racial representation-equality of results rather than mere equal opportunity-became the Continucd on back flap $30.00 ISBN 10 D 8447 4269ISBN-13 978 0 8447 4269 4 111 1 1 53 000 98 78844 74 2694 11 mt PIoto

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