The City Journal has this story on a petard hoist.  A portion:

“On an abnormally chilly morning this past summer, a group of black leaders gathered in front of the California African-American Museum in Los Angeles to oppose what they called an ‘effort to turn back the clock’ and ‘declare the premature death of black political power.’ The purported death sentence was issued one day before, with the release of prospective statewide redistricting maps, which consolidated African-American voters in Los Angeles County into one congressional district. Racial gerrymandering has been a common method of disenfranchising black Americans since the days of Reconstruction. But this time, the law that protesters were opposing was one identified with racial progress: the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

‘The Voting Rights Act is being used to disadvantage black people in Los Angeles,’explained Jackie Dupont-Walker, the influential leader of the Ward Economic Development Corp., in the Los Angeles Sentinel, one of L.A.’s leading African-American community newspapers. Dupont-Walker wasn’t alone in making the explosive claim. The City of Angels’ most prominent black leaders have taken a united stand against the landmark civil rights legislation. Representative Karen Bass, the first black woman in the United States to serve as speaker of a state legislature, added, ‘We should not accept the Voting Rights Act.’ An African-American member of the state’s redistricting commission lamented at a July hearing: ‘The Voting Rights Act is now . . . an instrument to be used against the African-American population.'”