Cite as: 521 U. S. 74 (1997)
Breyer, J., dissenting
ber) Senate are elected from majority-white districts; all of those members are white. Ibid. Until 1972, Georgia had not elected any African-American Members of Congress since Reconstruction. 1 Reference Library of Black America 67 (K. Estell ed. 1994). Since then, it has elected a total of four. Sherman, Diluting Black Votes for a Stronger Voice; Politicians Debate Impact of Remap, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Dec. 17, 1995, p. G3. Each of those Members originally represented a majority-minority district (although two of them were recently reelected as incumbents after boundary changes created white majorities in their districts). Ante, at 93.
These circumstances help to explain why the 1991 Georgia Legislature might have thought that the creation of two majority-minority districts would help overcome race-related barriers—barriers erected by history and prejudice, reinforced by inertia and nonparticipation. Not only the three-district plan, but also the 1991 plan and the first (unprecleared) 1992 plan suggest that that is what the legislature did think. And I can find no reason in the record not to take at face value what all the legislature's plans thereby suggest, namely, that two majority-minority districts represent a significant legislative "policy and preference."
B
The majority says that the legislature's two-district preference is not owed Upham deference because a plan that embodied that preference is (or would be) "flawed by evidence of predominant racial motive," ante, at 90, or based upon race to a degree not reasonably necessary to comply with § 2 of the VRA, 42 U. S. C. § 1973. The majority means that a two-district plan would be unlawful—that it would violate the Constitution as interpreted in Miller. I cannot agree.
Miller considered the constitutionality of a three-district plan. Its five-Justice majority included one Member who
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