Cite as: 509 U. S. 630 (1993)
Opinion of the Court
understood as anything other than an effort to "segregat[e] . . . voters" on the basis of race. Gomillion, supra, at 341. Gomillion, in which a tortured municipal boundary line was drawn to exclude black voters, was such a case. So, too, would be a case in which a State concentrated a dispersed minority population in a single district by disregarding traditional districting principles such as compactness, contiguity, and respect for political subdivisions. We emphasize that these criteria are important not because they are constitutionally required—they are not, cf. Gaffney v. Cummings, 412 U. S. 735, 752, n. 18 (1973)—but because they are objective factors that may serve to defeat a claim that a district has been gerrymandered on racial lines. Cf. Karcher v. Daggett, 462 U. S. 725, 755 (1983) (Stevens, J., concurring) ("One need not use Justice Stewart's classic definition of obscenity—'I know it when I see it'—as an ultimate standard for judging the constitutionality of a gerrymander to recognize that dramatically irregular shapes may have sufficient probative force to call for an explanation" (footnotes omitted)).
Put differently, we believe that reapportionment is one area in which appearances do matter. A reapportionment plan that includes in one district individuals who belong to the same race, but who are otherwise widely separated by geographical and political boundaries, and who may have little in common with one another but the color of their skin, bears an uncomfortable resemblance to political apartheid. It reinforces the perception that members of the same racial group—regardless of their age, education, economic status, or the community in which they live—think alike, share the same political interests, and will prefer the same candidates at the polls. We have rejected such perceptions elsewhere as impermissible racial stereotypes. See, e. g., Holland v. Illinois, 493 U. S. 474, 484, n. 2 (1990) ("[A] prosecutor's assumption that a black juror may be presumed to be partial simply because he is black . . . violates the Equal Protection
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