Republicans pushed their redistricting plan
through the Legislature early this morning with a move that one Senate
Democrat said was more racist than segregation-era Alabama.“Racist
as I don’t know what!” Sen. Rodger Smitherman, D-Birmingham, shouted on
the Senate floor. “Racist. Prejudiced. Racist. That’s what we’ve got
going on in this state now. Alabama is going backwards, to the racist Ku
Klux times.”
However, in analyzing the maps as a whole:
The maps create 28 majority-minority House districts — an increase
of one over the current map — and eight majority-minority Senate
districts.“Realizing
that close to a fourth of our population is black, it would not be
surprising that we come with approximately a fourth of our House and
Senate districts being black,” McClendon (Rep. Jim McClendon, R-Springville) said after the House
committee’s vote. Mapmakers used a one-percent deviation standard, meaning they sought to
stay as close to district population targets as possible. Democrats have
complained that standard limits black voters’ ability to form
coalitions with white voters.