From: lydick@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU (Speaker-to-Minerals)
Newsgroups: alt.callahans
Subject: Re: More elections, a victory...
Date: 6 Nov 1992 10:03:02 GMT
Organization: HST Wide Field/Planetary Camera
Distribution: world
Reply-To: lydick@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU
NNTP-Posting-Host: sol1.gps.caltech.edu

In article <1992Nov5.034627.13318@midway.uchicago.edu>, mss2@quads.uchicago.edu (Michael S. Schiffer) writes:
>	"One of the results of this has been deliberate, often blatant
>gerrymandering to create black districts, Hispanic districts, and so
>on.

Yup.  They explicitly did just that in Los Angeles about four years or so ago
(sorry that I don't know for sure, but I live in Los Angeles County, so the way
they set up districts in Los Angeles *city* is totally irrelevent to me).

>Basically, they're "separate but equal" voting districts, except
>that this time it's not the segregationists who are supporting them,
>but the proponents of diversity.  I have to wonder, though, if
>increased diversity in the legislature is worth the cost of saying,
>basically, that blacks and whites, or Hispanics and Anglos, have such
>fundamentally opposed interests that one person cannot adequately
>represent both of them.  This was taken to such a degree that when a
>non-Hispanic candidate looked likely to win a carefully created New
>York City Hispanic district in the primaries, there was outspoken
>criticism of him for choosing to run there when he "knew" that that
>district was supposed to be for a Hispanic to win-- and never mind
>what the voters wanted.  (As it happened, he lost.)
>
>	"I've always thought that the ideal was to judge people "by the
>content of their character" and politicians by their politics.

Sorry, you're not politically correct on this issue.  The current received
wisdom is that each group shall have members on every legislative body in
direct proportion to the number of members of that group in society at large.
(By the way, it was that particular idiotic bit of received wisdom that Bush
was objecting to when he vetoed the first alleged "civil rights" bill a year or
so ago).

>The reason that it seems wrong to me to have a Congress composed solely of
>white  males is that there _are_ qualified, competent people all across the
>political spectrum who _aren't_ white males, and the near-total lack of
>them in high office suggests systematic bias, which means we're
>probably getting, on-average, worse people than we might otherwise.

Careful, there, you're starting to sound like a libertarian, and you KNOW how
politically incorrect THEY are!

>(Of course, as per the recent probability discussion, it's
>theoretically possible that by some amazing coincidence, all the best
>possible politicians have been white males.  But when I see results of
>a hundred coin flips come up heads, _I_ for one assume that the coin
>is fixed.  :-) )

Agreed.  Though tracking down the mechanisms in this case should be good for a
Ph.D. in political science for somebody.

>
>	"Kitten, I do apologize for using your remarks to launch
>myself onto a soapbox.  But the fission of the country into seperate
>communities is a continuing trend which worries me.

I'm not sure whether I should be worried or pleased.  After all, Clinton has
just managed to convince the American electorate that separation of powers as
envisioned by the framers of the Constitution is *BAD* [he did it by calling it
gridlock];  I don't know whether a similar separation on other grounds is good
or bad, given that the original separation has been subverted.

>In the end, if
>people consider themselves members of small groups first and members
>of a larger whole second, then I think we're in trouble.  Being proud
>of one's heritage and gender and such is one thing, and is I think a
>good thing-- but to consider them more important than ideas and ideals
>endangers the foundations of a country in which all the citizens are
>supposed to be politically equal, and suggests that we are in fact not
>a single nation, but many nations playing a zero-sum game, in which
>the only way to help one is to hurt another.

Er, I think that if you'll read the Federalist Papers, you'll find out that
that's exactly the model of the country on which our government is based.
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