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The Great Decolorizer

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After the redistricting suits are over, Blum hopes to preempt future attempts at racial gerrymandering. Starting around 1999, when state legislative bodies and redistricting committees hold conventions, the Campaign plans to hand out policy books and otherwise inform legislators of its views.

But that's all in the future. For now, Blum is still engaged in overturning the status quo, fighting the set-asides that already exist. This spring, he took the podium at a redistricting hearing at City Hall. The city proposed a new, barbell-shaped District E, one that would unite Kingwood, a mostly white, affluent area, with Clear Lake, another mostly white, affluent area. The two would be connected only by a 50-mile-long water conduit.

City planners had fashioned the district after Kingwood's annexation, aiming not to fuse the conservative neighborhood with the mostly black, low-income District B just to its south. Had Kingwood been joined with District B, it's likely black activists would have asked the U.S. Justice Department to file suit against the city, since the Voting Rights Act prevents the redrawing of district lines to weaken a minority's voting power.

But by pairing Kingwood with Clear Lake, the city had provoked a suit from the Campaign for a Color-Blind America. From the podium, Blum told councilmembers that the district was drawn for racial purposes, and was as illegal as the congressional district lines he'd already helped erase.

Councilman Jew Don Boney clearly wasn't thinking of Blum as an old friend from UT. Boney likened Blum's dismissal of the long-term economic and educational consequences of racism to an apology by a drunk driver who cripples a pedestrian. In explaining that view, Boney spoke as the driver: "Sure, I was drunk when that happened, but now I'm sober. So you take responsibility for being a cripple by virtue of my running over you, and I take responsibility for being sober, and we just forget about it."

Boney switched back to his own voice to discuss Blum's beliefs further. "Being a minister and a councilmember, I can't say what I'd like to say," he said. "So we'll just say, 'horse hockey.'"

Boney told the councilmembers that he believed the proposed district was a good one, that Kingwood has more in common with Clear Lake than with the low-income neighborhoods of District B. "Kingwood and Clear Lake are master-planned communities, developed with all the amenities that communities in B do not have," he noted. "Their politics are different, based on the different needs of the communities. In Clear Lake, they've got a big struggle over who is going to cut the weeds on the esplanades every two weeks. The big question in District B is, are we going to have esplanades?"

Boney saw little difference between the contortions of the proposed District E and those of the congressional districts redrawn by three Republican-appointed judges. During a question-and-answer period, he tried to maneuver Blum into admitting as much.

"I think the three-judge panel could have done better in reuniting neighborhoods," allowed Blum, "but clearly what they did was 180 degrees improvement to what we had."

Boney persisted: "You feel it is constitutional?"
"Councilman," said Blum, "the Supreme Court has accepted it. So whether I accept it or reject it is rather moot."

"Understand too that in 1896 the Supreme Court sanctioned segregation and American apartheid," Boney replied. "Sometimes, as Martin Luther King said, we have to be guided by a higher law."

Boney had the last word, at least in that hearing, but the larger victory may yet be Blum's. His case against the city is still proceeding, and for the moment, the lower laws of the land -- or at least the federal judiciary -- seem firmly on his side.

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