912
Opinion of the Court
the offensive and demeaning assumption that voters of a particular race, because of their race, "think alike, share the same political interests, and will prefer the same candidates at the polls." Shaw, supra, at 647; see Metro Broadcasting, supra, at 636 (Kennedy, J., dissenting). Race-based assignments "embody stereotypes that treat individuals as the product of their race, evaluating their thoughts and efforts— their very worth as citizens—according to a criterion barred to the Government by history and the Constitution." Metro Broadcasting, supra, at 604 (O'Connor, J., dissenting) (citation omitted); see Powers v. Ohio, 499 U. S. 400, 410 (1991) ("Race cannot be a proxy for determining juror bias or competence"); Palmore v. Sidoti, 466 U. S. 429, 432 (1984) ("Classifying persons according to their race is more likely to reflect racial prejudice than legitimate public concerns; the race, not the person, dictates the category"). They also cause society serious harm. As we concluded in Shaw:
"Racial classifications with respect to voting carry particular dangers. Racial gerrymandering, even for remedial purposes, may balkanize us into competing racial factions; it threatens to carry us further from the goal of a political system in which race no longer matters— a goal that the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments embody, and to which the Nation continues to aspire. It is for these reasons that race-based districting by our state legislatures demands close judicial scrutiny." Shaw, supra, at 657.
Our observation in Shaw of the consequences of racial stereotyping was not meant to suggest that a district must be bizarre on its face before there is a constitutional violation. Nor was our conclusion in Shaw that in certain instances a district's appearance (or, to be more precise, its appearance in combination with certain demographic evidence) can give rise to an equal protection claim, 509 U. S., at 649, a holding that bizarreness was a threshold showing, as appellants be-
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