940
Ginsburg, J., dissenting
doors open, you'd kill most of the people in the district." ' Washington Post, Apr. 20, 1993, p. A4. The district even has inspired poetry: 'Ask not for whom the line is drawn; it is drawn to avoid thee.' Grofman, Would Vince Lombardi Have Been Right If He Had Said: 'When It Comes to Redistricting, Race Isn't Everything, It's the Only Thing'?, 14 Cardozo L. Rev. 1237, 1261, n. 96 (1993) (internal quotation marks omitted)." Id., at 635-636 (some citations and internal quotation marks omitted).
The problem in Shaw was not the plan architects' consideration of race as relevant in redistricting. Rather, in the Court's estimation, it was the virtual exclusion of other factors from the calculus. Traditional districting practices were cast aside, the Court concluded, with race alone steering placement of district lines.
B
The record before us does not show that race similarly overwhelmed traditional districting practices in Georgia. Although the Georgia General Assembly prominently considered race in shaping the Eleventh District, race did not crowd out all other factors, as the Court found it did in North Carolina's delineation of the Shaw district.
In contrast to the snake-like North Carolina district inspected in Shaw, Georgia's Eleventh District is hardly "bizarre," "extremely irregular," or "irrational on its face." Id., at 642, 644, 658. Instead, the Eleventh District's design reflects significant consideration of "traditional districting factors (such as keeping political subdivisions intact) and the usual political process of compromise and trades for a variety of nonracial reasons." 864 F. Supp. 1354, 1397, n. 5 (SD Ga. 1994) (Edmondson, J., dissenting); cf. ante, at 917 ("geometric shape of the Eleventh District may not seem bizarre on its face"). The district covers a core area in central and east-
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