Here’s an edited version with changes bolded:
Delbert Hosemann wants you to know that he doesn’t see color, which I figure leaves him clueless at gender-reveal parties.
To color-blind folks, everything is white or a shade of black. So when Mississippi Republicans claim they don’t see color, I am inclined to believe them.
As is the case when Republicans speechify at the Neshoba County Fair, also known as The Whitest Show on Earth, the lieutenant governor laid out his conservative bona fides during Wednesday’s speech. The venue has always featured a conspiratorial tone, a gathering where you don’t have to worry about being tactful. Politicians can blurt it right out at the fair. And they do.
Hosemann devoted his speech to the hottest topic going: redistricting.
In April, the Supreme Court ruled in Louisiana v. Callais that a state cannot use race as a means of assuring Black representation, but it sure as hell can redistrict to prevent Black representation by calling it something less offensive, in this case, the euphemism “political redistricting.”
Hosemann is down for that.
“I’m not talking about race,” Hosemann said. “There are only districts I got named one, two, three and four.”
Republican-dominated states have been whipped into a redistricting frenzy now that the Supreme Court has given them license to gerrymander Black citizens right out of elected office.
Gov. Tate Reeves plans to call a special session of the Legislature to draw up new, lighter-shade-of-pale districts. Speaker of the House Jason White has made it a top legislative priority.
Hosemann has put together a committee of seven Republicans and two Democrats, which could just as easily be described as seven whites and two Blacks, a roster that speaks volumes about who’s what in Mississippi.
“One of the few rights we have as a state is our right to set the way we elect people and their districts,” Hosemann said in his speech. “And when we tried to redistrict Mississippi the way your legislature, the people you hired, wanted to, the federal court said, ‘No, you can’t do it that way. We want other people elected.’ The Democrats used that to elect Democrats and not the people you want.
“Now the Supreme Court changed that and we are back to scrounge…scrounge back…back to ground one where we should be.”
The only thing accurate about Hosemann’s account of the history and future of redistricting in Mississippi was his Freudian slip. Scrounging around is the perfect description for what’s going on here.
The semantics of describing this new approach to redistricting as “party-based rather than race-based” doesn’t change the facts.
It is impossible to base redistricting on anything other than race in a state like Mississippi.
What would a district based on party preference look like? If you tried to build a Venn diagram showing the overlap between Mississippi’s racial demographics and political preferences, you wouldn’t get two intersecting circles. You’d get just one. Best estimates show that 80% to 85% of white Mississippians are Republican voters while 90% to 95% of Black Mississippians vote for Democrats.
Most Mississippians know this. Mississippi politicians definitely know this.
What the political bosses apparently don’t understand is that Mississippi could not redistrict strictly according to party affiliation even if they wanted to, which they definitely do.
Why not? Because party affiliation does not exist in Mississippi. No one can register to vote as a Democrat or a Republican. There is no document to sign, no membership card to carry around. You can be a Democrat on Sunday and a Republican on Monday. You can vote for a Republican in a primary election and turn right around and vote for the Democrat in the general election.
You cannot legitimately redistrict on the basis of something that doesn’t exist.
The criteria that do exist, the criteria Hosemann and others intend to use despite their denials, are race. It’s on your birth certificate. It’s on virtually every legal application or document you sign. You can’t be Black one place and white another.
It would be just as easy to redistrict based on how tall people are as it is to base Mississippi redistricting on anything other than race.
When the dust settles, redistricting in Mississippi — where almost 4 in 10 citizens are Black — will leave Black Mississippians without representation. That is unconscionable.
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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