1022
Stevens, J., dissenting
from District 30 add progressively less in the way of population, and, more important for purposes of this inquiry, they actually reduce the proportional share of minorities in the district. See State's Exh. 33.
For example: The worst offender, in the trained eye of the Court, may be the northern arm of the district that winds around the Park Cities and then up into Collin County. But that arm, which contains 22% of the population, is only 21% black, ibid.—a proportion essentially identical to the proportion of African-Americans in Dallas County as a whole.20
The plurality is certainly correct in pointing out that District 30's outlying reaches encompass some communities with high concentrations of minorities.21 It is implausible
20 See 861 F. Supp., at 1312 (black population in Dallas County is 362,130); Bureau of Census, Population and Housing Unit Counts 185 (Oct. 1993) (total population of Dallas County is 1,852,810).
21 Several responses to the plurality's specific examples are worth making, however. In Collin County, the plurality relies on the fact that the "combined African-American and Hispanic" population in the Collin County extremity of the northern appendage to District 30 is in excess of 50%. Ante, at 971. But District 30 was created with an eye to a majority-black population, rather than a majority-minority population, so the more relevant facts are that (i) African-Americans make up only 19.8% of the Collin County appendage, App. 331, (ii) those African-Americans consist of only two-tenths of 1% of the entire population in the district, ibid., and (iii) this appendage contains more majority-white census blocks than it does majority-minority census blocks, see State's Exh. 45.
The plurality also points out that a small portion of one of the tentacles—the one that extends west into Tarrant County—contains an African-American majority. Ante, at 965. It would be implausible to claim, however, that race was the "predominant" reason that this community was included in District 30. First, the community had been part of Senator Johnson's state legislative district, see n. 17, supra; second, it also includes majority-white census blocks; and third, the total population in that portion of the district is less than 2,000 people. App. 331. Finally, and more important, the population of the entire western tentacle (at the tip of which is the Tarrant County community) is only 29% black, see State's Exh. 33—less than half the proportion of minorities in the core of the district.
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