America has always been the great melting pot, or as some suggested, a salad bowl. Immigrants have traditionally clumped in tribal like enclaves in the larger cities. The old folks mostly spoke the language of their former home and their children grew up speaking english. They were often the object of endless ethnic jokes and varying forms of discrimination. Most overcame it and their children and grandchildren eventually became the mainstream politicians, policemen, entrepreneurs, teachers and tradesmen and achieved the storied American Dream.
In the 1960's, the major battles to end racial discrimination began in earnest. Segregation became a bad word and integration was the new battle cry. We bused children across towns in order to end the segregation policies in the schools. Jim Crow was run out of town. The battle still goes on in smaller skirmishes these days, but laws were passed, lawsuits were won and rules were made and today, 50 years later, we have a Black President.
And now,in 2011, we are on the verge of reverting back to tribal enclaves where the children do ot become mainstream. Each of these communities has it's own leadership, elected and unelected. They seem not to seek integration, but power over their own and others.
In California (where else?) they are seeking to build the walls around those enclaves even higher. Because California lost a Congressional representative in the last Census due to a declining population, they had to redraw the district lines. Traditionally this is a partisan exercise. The majority party in place at the time of the redistricting redraws the lines to suit them and attempt to give them a political advantage. It's called gerrymandering and both parties are guilty of it each time they get the chance.
The good citizens of California decided to do things a bit differently. Tasked with this chore, they set up a "blue ribbon committee" of 14 people.
The California Citizens Redistricting Commission is made up of five Democrats, five Republicans and four independents. The members went through a vigorous application process designed to weed out anyone with an overt political bias.
I'm sure they did their dead level best to weed out overt political bias, but I'll bet this panel was overwhelmingly liberal. It had to be.
What they did was draw the lines along ethnic enclaves.
"We're going to have more competitive elections in November than this state has seen, probably in two decades," political expert Allen Hoffenblum told Fox News.
Hoffenblum says if the result of previous redistricting was that it protected incumbents, the error with the citizens' map is that it is heavily skewed to racial demographics.
"We went from a political gerrymand to a racial gerrymand. That the commission became overly conscious of drawing seats on race. The Latino seats, the black seats, the Asian seats. And in the process of creating these districts based on race they divided counties, they divided cities and split cities."
So instead of a Democrat or a Republican seat, they will have a ethnic seats. I can't imagine that the Republicans had much say about any of this. It's one thing, I guess, to draw the lines with a political pen, it's another to do so with an ethnic pen.
I guess this stems from the idea that's been kicked around by liberals that says that only Latinos can represent Latinos and Blacks can only represent Blacks, etc. It's ludicrous and patently un-American, but it will now become part of our grand experiment. It's been done on smaller scales in Black communities here and there, but this time, it will be an entire state.
It will most likely have the effect of blocking most Republicans, worse than they already do now. Most incumbents have either been drawn out, or they face some stiff opposition from the ethnic enclaves.
The salad bowl is now a salad bar - with each part in a different restaurant. It's just another step in the Balkanization of America.
VW
