U.S. SUPREME COURT
TAKES UP RACE-BASED
ADMISSIONS AT UNC
By Cash Michaels
Will the race-based admissions policy of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a public institution, survive examination of the 6-3 conservative majority U.S. Supreme Court ? The High Court agreed to take up the case Monday, in addition to looking at the same policy maintained by prestigious Harvard University, a private institution. The justices could hear arguments this fall.
If a majority of justices agree with plaintiffs Students for Fair Admissions’ lawsuits that the policies discriminate against whites and Asian Americans, thus creating racial quotas, there could be less Black and Hispanic students on the nation’s college campuses if they got there by affirmative action.
In short, less diversity on majority white college campuses.
Most observers agree that the conservative Supreme Court majority is likely to do away with race-based admissions, especially since three of the six conservatives on the court now - Chief Justice John Roberts, and associate justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas - were in the minority when the court last took up a similar case in 2016.
At that time, by a 4-3 margin, the court ruled in a case involving a white woman suing the University of Texas that colleges and universities could use race only as a narrow factor in admissions.
Since that ruling, Pres. Donald Trump appointed three more conservatives to the High Court after associate justices Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Antonin Scalia died, and Anthony Kennedy left in 2018.
It was 1978 when the Supreme Court decided it’s first landmark affirmative action college admissions case, siding with the Regents of the University of California against a white student named Allan Bakke in ruling that race can be a factor in admissions.
UNC and Harvard are technically two separate lawsuits that have been joined together for the convenience of the court.
“We look forward to defending the University’s holistic admissions process before the U.S. Supreme Court,” said Beth Keith, Associate Vice Chancellor for University Communications, in a statement. “As the trial court held, our process is consistent with long-standing Supreme Court precedent and allows for an evaluation of each student in a deliberate and thoughtful way.”
UNC’s admissions policy had won approval last October when a Black federal judge in North Carolina ruled that its diversity policy “…stands strict scrutiny…is therefore constitutionally permissible,” and was beneficial to students.
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U.S. SENATE FAILURE ON PASSING
VOTING RIGHTS HURTS N.C.
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer
Bishop William Barber doesn’t see the U.S. Senate’s filibuster just as a mechanism to thwart the passage of important voting rights legislation, as happened last week when two moderate Democratic senators joined with 50 Republicans to vote against changing the rules. He sees it as a tool against helping poor people of all colors achieve the economic and civil rights justice they have long been historically denied.
“We should’ve never had a separation of [Pres. Biden’s] infrastructure bill, Build Back Better and voting rights,” Bishop Barber told reporters recently while promoting the national Poor People’s Campaign’s Mass Poor People and Low-Wage Workers’ Assembly and Moral March on Washington and to the Polls on June 18th. “We should’ve recognized that the infrastructure of our democracy [is also vital].”
As many present-day observers agree, Bishop Barber is often compared to 1960s’ civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. because of his outspoken opposition to civil injustice. So it is no surprise that King, whose birthday and holiday the nation commemorated last week, also once criticized the U.S. Senate’s filibuster rule of requiring 60 votes when, in the opinion of many, a simple majority of 100 senators should be all that’s needed.
“I think the tragedy is that we have a Congress, with a Senate, that has a minority of misguided senators who will use the filibuster to keep the majority of people from even voting,” Dr. King is seen saying during video of a 1963 press conference.
Almost 60 years later, it was Dr. King’s eldest son, Martin III, who blasted Senate Republicans plus moderate Democrats Joe Manchin (D-WVa) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Az) for not voting to change the filibuster rules to allow passage of voting rights legislation.
“History will not remember them kindly,” King III told marchers in the nation’s capitol last week.
The repeated failure of the Democrat-led Senate to pass meaningful voting rights legislation this session of Congress (the Democratic majority in the House has passed it) means that for North Carolina, unless the 4-3 Democrat majority on the NC Supreme Court rules otherwise, the voting districts redrawn by NC Republican legislative leaders for NC congressional and legislative races will not only maintain a lopsided GOP majority in the state for the nest ten years, but will do so at the cost of current Black elected representation.
According to an analysis by the nonprofit, nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice, the new redistricting by Republicans in the state legislature does African-American voters in North Carolina no favors.
The new [congressional] district configuration eliminates one of the state’s two majority-minority districts and packs nonwhite population into the other one. A third district that was close to being majority nonwhite now has fewer of people of color. The other districts largely see major population centers divided up in ways that do not follow community lines or natural geographic boundaries. Wake, Mecklenburg, and Guilford Counties, all home to sizeable communities of color, are each split across three separate districts under the new plan. And Forsyth and Guilford Counties are broken apart, suggesting an effort to diminish the influence of Black voters in and around the city of Greensboro, echoing maps from last decade that were found to violate the state constitution.
How his First Congressional District has been redrawn, for instance, is the same reason why Congressman G. K. Butterfield, a veteran African-American Democrat, has announced that he is stepping down after nine terms in office.
Per the legislative maps, at least two Black incumbent Democrat state senators in eastern North Carolina - Ernestine Bazemore from Bertie County, and veteran state Sen. Milton “Toby” Fitch of Wilson - have no chance of winning reelection in their newly drawn districts, according to an analysis by UCLA political scientist Jeffrey B. Lewis in recent court testimony
It wasn’t always this way.
Section 5 of the VRA prevented states with a history of voting rights discrimination, like North Carolina, from implementing any changes to its elections or redrawing of its voting districts without “pre-clearance” from the U.S. Justice Dept. first.
But in 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court threw out Section 5, freeing North Carolina and other southern states from that requirement, thus opening a virtual Pandora's Box of questionable redistricting and voting changes that now threaten fair elections in North Carolina and elsewhere, critics say.
The voting rights legislation that today’s U.S. Senate has failed to pass would have restored the Section 5 VRA requirements, and protected communities of color. Senate Democrats’ failure means North Carolina Democrats and progressive groups have to fight Republican efforts step by step.
In anticipation of a state High Court ruling that the new maps are illegal gerrymanders, the Republican-led NC General Assembly last week voted to further postpone this year’s political primaries from May 17 - the date primaries were originally moved to by the three-judge panel when they were postponed from March 8 - to a much-later June 7, in order to give themselves enough time to re-redraw the maps if so ordered by the NC Supreme Court.
Republicans do not want the NC Supreme Court redrawing the maps once the Court takes the case on Feb. 2nd, or having them redrawn without GOP input. If that happens, those maps will govern the 2022 elections, and beyond.
But that’s exactly what Democrats want, which is why they opposed the June 7th measure. Dems have already gotten signals that Gov. Roy Cooper may veto the measure.
On Jan. 21st, Gov. Cooper had joined with state Attorney Gen. Josh Stein in filing an amicus brief “…urging the Court to ensure that state elections are conducted under fair maps that are free from partisan gerrymandering.”
“The trial court recognized what has been obvious all along, that the legislative and congressional maps were intentionally gerrymandered.” said Governor Cooper. “That’s wrong and unconstitutional because it strips voters of their voice and power in our democracy.”
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THE ‘BLACK’ISH’ CITY
IN NC FOR 2021
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer
Which city in North Carolina had the Blackest population for 2021? And where did your city rank in the Top Ten? The Top Twenty? Even the Top One Hundred?
RoadSnacks is a subsidiary of the Raleigh-based real estate research group, HomeSnacks, which has been developing national and North Carolina lists of the cheapest places, best places to live, best small towns, fastest growing cities, most expensive cities, and other quality of life rankings for many years.
Based on the the latest U.S. Census data available (specifically the 2015 - 2019 American Community Survey Data), there are 42 million people in the United States who identify as either Black or African-American, comprising 12% of the total population.
Per North Carolina, 21.1% of it’s total population is Black or African-American.
Based on it’s research, RoadSnacks reports that Wadesboro - population 5, 305- had the highest percentage of citizens identifying as African-American in the state of North Carolina for 2021, at 72.05%.
Henderson - population 14, 948 - had the second largest percentage of Black citizens at 66.66%.
Kinston - population 20,398 - came in third with 65.86% Black or African-American.
Fourth for 2021 was Rocky Mount, which had a total population of 54,548 residents, 63.5% of whom were African-American
Oxford was fifth, with a population of just 8,721, 62.23% of whom were Black in 2021.
Sixth for 2021 was Williamston, which had 56.33% of it’s total population as Black.
Tarboro was seventh on the list of most Black populated cities in North Carolina with 54.74% of 10,915 total population.
Goldsboro came in eighth on the Blackest city in North Carolina list with 52.26% of a total population of 34,647.
Elizabeth City ranks ninth with 50.12% of a total population of 17,629 that are Black.
And rounding out the top ten Blackest cities in North Carolina for 2021, Laurinburg at 48.92% of 15,119.
For the record, based on this research by RoadSnack, Oak Island had the least number of African-American citizens in North Carolina, followed by Carolina Beach, and Kill Devil Hills.
Following the same rankings, from number 11 through twenty, Wilson had 48.2%; Nashville (47.12); Hamlet (46.0%); Selma (44.86%); Roxboro (44.48%); Knightdale (43.97%); Fayetteville (41.01%); Greensboro (41.01%); Dunn (40.83%); and Whiteville 40.7%).
Interesting Black populations of note across the state - Durham (38.02%); Statesville (35.43%); High Point (35.29%); Salisbury (35.03%); Charlotte (34.62%); Raleigh (28.23%); Wilmington (17.99%); Asheville (11.23%).
North Carolina comes in eighth of the top ten states in the nation with the largest Black population (Mississippi was the first).
The Blackest city in the nation - Jackson, Mississippi.
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