The Outstater
The End of Race Grifting
MASS MEDIA REGULARLY finds itself on the wrong side of public opinion. Readership, please know, is approaching statistical irrelevance. It is understandable then that corporate outfits such as Indianapolis’s Capital Chronicle are leaning heavily on contrived polling to support their points of view.
What, for example, do Hoosiers think about redistricting? Without context, it is a question unsuitable for standard opinion sampling. It pertains to that part of democracy most resembling sausage-making. Nobody wants to think about it much.
That does not deter the Chronicle editors in their drive to get the desired, self-affirming headline, “New Poll Reports Majority of Hoosiers Oppose Redistricting.”
But do we really? According to whom and compared with what? Ask a couple of hundred of us on a busy day and a good number are likely to say we favor a simplistic solution to a complicated problem just to get off the phone. Or worse, choose a response that we think is the most socially acceptable.
And missing from the coverage is what Hoosiers might think of the current redistricting map. They would be surprised to know that it gives one racial group (blacks) its own congressional district, a privilege denied others. You won’t be seeing any poll on what we think about that.
Andre Carson of the 7th District sits in Congress solely for the color of his skin. Given his extreme Islamist voting record, he could not be elected in any other configuration. Nor is prejudice a factor or justification. There are 15 blacks in Congress from white-majority districts. It is the government, not voters, obsessed with skin color.
It would be news to the Chronicle staff and readers that the issue is now before the Supreme Court of the United States, to wit, whether any specific race has an unconstrained “right” to be elected.
The case is Louisiana vs. Calais. It arises from a lawsuit filed by white voters against the state of Louisiana for drawing a majority-black congressional district under pressure from an Obama-appointed federal judge. The suit alleges that a racially gerrymandered district violates the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection clause.
“Would that mean fewer members of the Congressional Black Caucus?” asks Scott McCay inthe American Spectator. “Sure, maybe. It does mean the character of successful black politicians will necessarily change. It means we would likely see more Harold Fords and fewer Sheila Jackson Lees (or Andre Carsons).”
And here is Justice Brett Kavanaugh this week in oral arguments over Calais: “This Court’s cases, in a variety of contexts, have said that race-based remedies are permissible for a period of time — sometimes for a long period of time, decades in some cases — but that they should not be indefinite and should have an end point.”
But the Chronicle, self-satisfied behind its “scientific” polling, can’t be bothered with historical debates. Its coverage of redistricting reads like a rushed internal memo, not a serious effort to understand either democracy, the law or the Hoosier mind.
Of all mass media’s sins, such attempts to outright deceive are the most grievous. Don’t subscribe to them. — tcl
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