Vol. 11 No. 4 (April 2001) pp. 138-140.

AFRICAN AMERICANS AND THE POLITICS OF CONGRESSIONAL REDISTRICTING by Dewey M. Clayton. New York Garland Publishing Co., 2000. 208 pp. Cloth $50.00.

Reviewed by David T. Canon, University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Dewey Clayton has provided a useful contribution to the growing literature on race and congressional redistricting. This book provides an excellent introduction to the topic for readers who are not familiar with the central concepts and contours of the debate. It also presents an interesting behind-the-scenes glimpse of the redistricting process in North Carolina that should be of interest to specialists in the field. Before providing a more detailed critique, I will present a brief overview of the book.

The book begins with a brief discussion of the gap between blacks and whites on a variety of economic and social measures, including income, health, and the criminal justice system. This chapter also provides an overview of previous struggles for racial equality, including Reconstruction, the civil rights movement of the mid-20th century, and the rise of the Congressional Black Caucus in Congress. The next two chapters describe the redistricting process in North Carolina in 1992, with a focus on the partisan and racial dynamics of the process. Republicans were interested in creating two black-majority districts - one in the northeastern part of the state and the second along the southern part of the state. They believed that concentrating black voters in these two districts would allow them to defeat
two, or maybe even three white Democratic incumbents. The Democratic-controlled state legislature, however, decided to create only one black-
majority, precisely because of the partisan implications.

The next chapter describes how the Justice Department, pursuing its "maximization strategy," refused to preclear the redistricting plan, saying that North Carolina must create a second district. The Democratic coup, of course, was the creation of the I-85 district, which managed to not only create two black-majority districts but also to preserve the seats of all the Democratic incumbents (and produced a net gain of one seat for the Democrats in North Carolina in 1992). This chapter includes maps of the ten most important alternative districting plans, along with some basic information about the districts.

The Republicans responded by taking the matter to the courts. Chapter 5 discusses the various court cases in North Carolina, including the landmark decision SHAW v. RENO (1993). The latest iteration of the 12th district in North Carolina (the I-85 district in its original incarnation) is the focus of yet another Supreme Court ruling that will be decided some time this term. Chapter 6 reviews the SHAW progeny in South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas, and the next chapter presents the various standards of congressional redistricting as they were applied in North

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Carolina (such as population equality, compactness, contiguity, communities of interest, and respect for political boundaries). Although this discussion is very
thorough, it should have come before Chapter 5, so the principles of redistricting would have been presented before reviewing the actual cases. The last substantive chapter presents various calculations of compactness for the North Carolina districts. The chapter is useful for demonstrating that different definitions of compactness produce wildly different results. The conclusion of the book provides a strong argument for the necessity of black majority districts. Although I agree with the author's position on this issue, unfortunately the book does not provide any new evidence that would be likely to change the minds of people who are opposed to racial redistricting.

The focus on North Carolina is both the central strength and weakness of the book. Chapters 3, 4, 5, 7, and 8 focus entirely on North Carolina, while Chapters 2 and 6 are concerned with broader issues concerning redistricting (the introduction and conclusion discuss both North Carolina and broader issues). The strength of the case study is in the detailed examination of the redistricting process. Research for this book is based on newspaper accounts, existing scholarship, and eight interviews with participants in the North Carolina redistricting process. The interviews are especially useful for uncovering the motivations of the actors in the
process. However, the weakness of the case study approach is rooted in the lack of systematic evidence. The book does not provide the evidence necessary to answer some of the questions posed in the introduction: "Was it [racial redistricting] a victory for blacks; a compromise by Democrats; a major coup by Republicans?" (p. 4). Although these questions can be clearly answered for North Carolina, they cannot be addressed for racial redistricting more broadly. The lack of punch in the conclusion may also be attributed to the limitations of this case study. It is difficult to refute the arguments of the critics without systematic evidence from all black majority and black influence districts. The focus on the redistricting process, rather than the broader topics of the nature of representation
provided in these districts or the patterns of voting in the districts, prevents more conclusive statements about the ultimate impact of these districts.

I have two other very minor quibbles with the book. First, although the discussion of North Carolina is generally very illuminating, there was one point about the motivations of black and Republican actors in the redistricting process that missed the mark. Clayton points out the difference between the "pizza pie versus doughnut theory" of redistricting in urban areas (p. 42). The pizza approach divides up the urban core into slices, which gives Democrats a chance of carrying most, if not all, of the districts but perhaps without minority representation. The doughnut approach, which is favored by blacks and Republicans, creates inner core
districts that will be black majority (and Democratic) and ring districts in the suburbs that Republicans will win. Although this is an accurate statement of strategic motivations in the urban context generally, it does not apply to North Carolina where the black majority districts had to be cobbled together from various urban and rural areas. Second, Clayton makes the following claim in the introduction, "The important issues of race, representation, and redistricting have been very much neglected by political analysts, who have been preoccupied with representation of majority interests. Consequently, little attention has been paid

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to the issue of representation for an entrenched minority population" (p. xii). Although this may have been true when the author began his study, it is certainly no longer the case. A dozen books have been published in the past couple of years on the subject, including some that focus, at least in part, on the politics of the
redistricting process in North Carolina.

Despite these reservations, this book will be of interest to a broad range of readers who are looking for a good overview of the central debates and concepts concerning racial redistricting. Racial redistricting will remain central in debates concerning racial representation in the next several years, and is certain to be litigated in the federal courts in the next round of redistricting.