“The implication is that republicans are racist, but they carve out those districts so that minorities can get elected, and it’s almost impossible to change them.”
I’ve been following this for decades. It started with the Civil Rights Act. With it, black leaders DEMANDED more black faces in Congress. Not necessarily more Democrats, but more black faces, and the only way to get black faces, was to pack blacks into their own districts. That was all that mattered. Bush Senior, in one of his few smart moves, decided to enforce that law to the letter. And so black faces increased...but for every new black face (always a Democrat, of course), 2 or 3 white Democrats ‘disappeared’ as remaining districts became more conservative. The fallout was evident a few years later, in 1994 when the Reps swept into the House.
Then black leaders complained that not enough Democrats were getting elected...but too late, they lost.
Good analysis.
Congress is a zero-sum game. Someday those gerrymandered district representatives might form their own political party and negotiate with Republicans instead of just being Democrat slaves.