Racial Equality and Deservingness in Municipal Redistricting

• In Event: The Racial State

Abstract

This paper demonstrates the different discursive and data tactics employed by city council members in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Miami in the 2021-2022 municipal redistricting process to argue for the preservation of Black- and Latino-majority districts. How do city council members propose racial equality in municipal redistricting? How do they define “communities of interest” to achieve their stated goals of fair representation? There are two components of this project: (1) an analysis of the contentious Chicago and Los Angeles redistricting processes, characterized by Black-Latino power struggles, and (2) an analysis of the arguments employed in GRACE, Inc. v. City of Miami (2024) that overhauled the majority-Latino council’s map over claims that “racial gerrymandering” disenfranchised existing Black communities. I analyze transcriptions of city council meetings and public hearings regarding municipal redistricting in 2021 and 2022; the city council map motions, reports, and proposals presented to the public and voted on; public materials from GRACE, Inc. v. City of Miami (2024); the 2020 census data relied upon in the map drawing processes; and media coverage, including city council member’s social media and letters to the editor to newspapers. I am currently in the midst of interviews. My analysis so far has found that council members’ arguments for equitable redistricting were based on three different geographies: city-recognized neighborhoods, existing districts, and census-based protected classes. While claims for protecting “communities of interest” may have engaged in multiple geographies, city council members prioritized certain definitions dependent on each city’s demographic contexts, laws, local government structure, and personal gains. Ultimately, these case studies lend some understanding of how people of color in positions of power in local government evoke their expertise as members of their communities and the authority of racial data in deciding what are the most equitable means of spatially organizing the city.

Author

• Christina Cano, Yale University