Cite as: 517 U. S. 952 (1996)
Stevens, J., dissenting
316-317 (1986) (Stevens, J., dissenting); Regents of Univ. of Cal. v. Bakke, 438 U. S. 265, 320 (1978). While the Court insisted in Shaw I that racial classifications of this sort injure the Nation (though not necessarily any particular group) in myriad ways, see 509 U. S., at 647-648, redistricting that complies with the three factors I outline above simply is not the sort of despicable practice that has been taken in the past to exclude minorities from the electoral process. See Shaw II, ante, at 931-933 (Stevens, J., dissenting); Shaw I, 509 U. S., at 682-685 (Souter, J., dissenting); cf., e. g., Gomil-lion v. Lightfoot, 364 U. S. 339 (1960); Terry v. Adams, 345 U. S. 461 (1953). While any racial classification may risk some stereotyping, the risk of true "discrimination" in this case is extremely tenuous in light of the remedial purpose the classification is intended to achieve and the long history of resistance to giving minorities a full voice in the political process. Given the balancing of subtle harms and strong remedies—a balancing best left to the political process, not to our own well-developed but rigid jurisprudence—the plurality reasonably concludes that race-conscious redistricting is not always a form of "discrimination" to which we should direct our most skeptical eye.
III
While the Court has agreed that race can, to a point, govern the drawing of district lines, it nonetheless suggests that at a certain point, when the State uses race "too much," illegitimate racial stereotypes threaten to overrun and contaminate an otherwise legitimate redistricting process. In Miller, the Court concluded that this point was reached when "race for its own sake, and not other districting principles, was the . . . dominant and controlling rationale" behind the shape of the district. 515 U. S., at 913. For strict scrutiny to apply, therefore, the plaintiff must demonstrate that "the legislature subordinated traditional race-neutral districting principles, including but not limited to compactness,
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