James Clyburn on Redistricting in S.C.: There Is Something ‘Fundamentally Wrong’ When They Say Drawing a 45% African-American District Is Not Okay

EXCERPT:

CLYBURN: "I think that those fundamental principles that ought to be considered when you’re doing redistricting were just violated by this map. Whoever drew this map up in Washington and sent it down here violated the basic principle, number one of which is maintaining communities of interest in concert with each other. They just threw that out of the window. The whole notion of not — or minimizing the splitting of counties, one county is split four different ways in order — as they did down in Tennessee with Memphis. This is tortuous behavior that should not take place. If you want to draw districts along partisan political lines, that’s one thing. But if you are fishing around to lump all of the black voters in one place, split them up. And you don’t have a problem with a congressional district that’s 75% white? That’s an over-representation of white people in South Carolina. And so you’ve got these 75% white districts, and that’s okay. And you draw a 45% African-American district, and that’s not okay. There’s something fundamentally wrong with that.”