1032
Stevens, J., dissenting
licans than Communists.29 Requiring the State to ignore the association between race and party affiliation would be no more logical, and potentially as harmful, as it would be to prohibit the Public Health Service from targeting African-American communities in an effort to increase awareness regarding sickle-cell anemia.30
Despite all the efforts by the plurality and the District Court, then, the evidence demonstrates that race was not, in all likelihood, the "predominant" goal leading to the creation of District 30. The most reasonable interpretation of the record evidence instead demonstrates that political considerations were. In accord with the presumption against interference with a legislature's consideration of complex and competing factors, see n. 9, supra, I would conclude that the configuration of District 30 does not require strict scrutiny.
29 "A prediction based on a racial characteristic is not necessarily more reliable than a prediction based on some other group characteristic. Nor, since a legislator's ultimate purpose in making the prediction is political in character, is it necessarily more invidious or benign than a prediction based on other group characteristics. In the line-drawing process, racial, religious, ethnic, and economic gerrymanders are all species of political gerrymanders." Mobile v. Bolden, 446 U. S. 55, 88 (1980) (Stevens, J., concurring in judgment) (footnote omitted).
To the extent that a political prediction based on race is incorrect, the voters have an entirely obvious way to ensure that such irrationality is not relied upon in the future: Vote for a different party. A legislator relying on racial demographics to ensure his or her election will learn a swift lesson if the presumptions upon which that reliance was based are incorrect.
30 I find it particularly ironic that the Court considers the use of race verboten in this benign context, while the Court just recently, on the basis of evidence that, inter alia, "[m]ore than 90% of the persons sentenced in 1994 for crack cocaine trafficking were black," dismissed out of hand the Ninth Circuit's assumption that "people of all races commit all types of crimes." United States v. Armstrong, ante, at 469. The Ninth Circuit's conclusion, it seems to me, is a model of the sort of race-neutral decision-making that this Court insists should be a part of constitutional decision-making processes.
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