Mapping Democracy: Racial Identity and the Quandary of Political Representation

Abstract

In a series of lawsuits during the 1990s, federal courts in the United States rejected congressional election districts that had both extremely irregular boundaries and nonwhite majorities. In particular, courts ruled that the shape of these districts-which they characterized as "bizarre" and noncompact-demonstrated that states had unconstitutionally classified voters by race. These legal cases reflect a fundamental tension in American political culture between universalistic citizenship and particularistic racial identity. Universalistic concepts that embrace numeric political representation, geometric standards of shape, and the "liberal self " share an understanding of the individual as the basic unit of political representation and define this individual by the ability to make rational choices. In contrast, concepts of particularistic identity that emphasize the importance of "regional community representation," informal visual standards of shape, and place-based or regional attachments view communities as the basic unit of political representation, and believe that individual identity is primarily constituted by membership in communities. Although some participants in the redistricting litigation have advocated notions of community based on racial solidarity, federal courts have only recognized such claims to the extent that these communities are defined by regional attachments. This suggests that the importance of regional attachments remains firmly entrenched in the American political system, despite the ascendance of "placeless" numeric representation. Notwithstanding the impassioned rhetoric on both sides, the effect of these cases is ambiguous for two reasons. First, the creation of nonwhite majority districts is a problematic strategy of political empowerment; second, the decisions do not directly address the underlying issues of segregation and racial inequality.

Municipal Underbounding: Annexation and Racial Exclusion in Small Southern Towns*

“…This small difference hardly suggests widespread or systematic discrimination of rural blacks through the annexation process. 9 One interpretation is that our results provide indirect evidence that Civil Rights legislation has been successful in removing the most blatant forms of anti-black discrimination, including the elimination of racially-motivated annexation practices that maintain white voting majorities and ensure that blacks are politically underrepresented in local municipal elections (see Forest 2001), and discriminatory land use policies that restrict economic development in black communities at the peripheries of municipalities (Nelson, Sanchez, and Dawkins 2004). concerning whether ''exclusion'' is primarily class-or race-based.…”

Rescaling the “Alien,” Rescaling Personhood: Neoliberalism, Immigration, and the State

“…As Don Mitchell has forcefully argued, however, "law matters" (2003,6), as laws have significant and real impacts on people's lives. Legal geographic scholarship has played a crucial role in illuminating the ways in which law and legal processes produce sociospatial opportunities and limitations, particularly along the axes of race, gender, and social class (Kobayashi 1990;Blomley 1994;Mitchell 1994Mitchell , 2003Delaney 1998;Forest 2001). This article aims to contribute to that discussion by engaging legal geography with geographic research on scale and rescaling.…”

Producción jurídica e imaginación global: cartografías urbanas a través de la ley en Barcelona

“…Por otro lado, buena parte de los cambios referidos a las producciones del espacio están relacionados con las transformaciones político-económicas que se llevan a cabo en las ciudades, así como la influencia que tienen la aplicación e interpretación legal sobre la exclusión de determinados grupos sociales (Blomley, 2003(Blomley, , 2010Dangschat, 2009;Forest, 2001Forest, , 2004Herbert, 2010;Mitchell, 1997Mitchell, , 2003Mitchell y Heynen, 2009;Staeheli, 2010), por lo cual dicha visión es compatible con muchos de los estudios procedentes de la economía política urbana (Blomley, 2004;Delaney et al, 2010), sobre todo en el estudio de los procesos de globalización (Barkan, 122 2011) o, especialmente, con las reflexiones acerca de las nuevas cartografías urbanas desarrolladas en las "ciudades-frontera" y con el análisis de los procesos globales urbanos como productores de regiones de frontera 4 . Considerando la región de frontera como "un frente pionero orientado hacia el exterior, como punta de lanza de la civilización" (Taylor y Flint, 2002: 179), la geografía crítica del derecho arroja luz acerca de las formas de producción política que estructuran esos modos de segregar la ciudad a partir de proyecciones exteriores y fronterizas de la ciudad, construidas fundamentalmente a través de diferentes fenómenos de gentrificación y renovación urbana 5 .…”