Cite as: 517 U. S. 952 (1996)
Souter, J., dissenting
know of as intentional vote dilution accounted for this astonishing fact,4 just as it is equally inescapable that remedies for vote dilution (and hedges against its reappearance) in the form of majority-minority districts account for the fact that the 104th Congress showed an increase of 39 black Members over the 1981 total. Minorities in Congress, 52 Cong. Q., Supplement to No. 44, p. 10 (Nov. 12, 1994); see also Parker, supra, at 771 (noting "a fifty percent increase in the number of black members of Congress").5
4 See Pildes, The Politics of Race, 108 Harv. L. Rev. 1359, 1369 (1995) (reviewing Quiet Revolution in the South: The Impact of the Voting Rights Act, 1965-1990 (C. Davidson & B. Grofman eds. 1994)) (noting that studies of Southern States demonstrate that, as a result of racial-bloc voting, "the probability of a district's electing a Black representative was less than 1% regardless of a district's median family income, its percentage of high school graduates; its proportion of residents who were elderly, urban, foreign-born, or who had been residents of the state for more than five years; or the region of the country in which the district was located"); id., at 1375 (finding similar results nationwide). There is, of course, reason to hope that conditions are improving. See infra, at 1076 (discussing elections in which crossover voting favors minority incumbents and in which racial issues have not played a significant role in the outcome). As I discuss in detail in Part IV, infra, I believe that these improvements may be attributed in large part to the effect of the Voting Rights Act, and thus to our willingness to allow race-conscious districting in certain situations.
5 I recognize, of course, that elsewhere we have imposed prohibitions on the consideration of race, but contexts are crucial in determining how we define "equal opportunity." Consider our decisions on peremptory jury challenges. There, as in politics, one race may not have had a fair shake from the other. But the differences between jury decisionmaking and political decisionmaking are, I believe, important ones. Politics includes choices between different sets of social values, choices that may ultimately turn on the ability of a particular group to enforce its demands through the ballot box. Jury decisionmaking is defined as a neutral process, the impartial application of law to a set of objectively discovered facts. To require racial balance in jury selection would risk redefining the jury's role. Without denying the possibility that race, especially as an imperfect proxy for experience, makes a difference in jury decisionmaking (and, in some cases, legitimately so), it seems to me that the better course is to
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