To the editor: Columnist Jonah Goldberg provides credit score on a floor stage to each the Equal Safety Clause of the U.S. Structure and to the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which he opines “can pull in reverse instructions,” thereby implying that they’re in battle with one another (“Cory Booker needs to be ashamed of himself,” Might 12). However are they?
Does the Equal Safety Clause require that Black voters forfeit the affect of their vote merely due to their handle? Congress answered that query with the enactment of the Voting Rights Act. Goldberg counters that the Voting Rights Act was meant to be “transitional,” as if there have been some kind of sundown clause inherent inside it. After which Goldberg ignores the present and growing racial hostility by proclaiming that “nothing — nothing — within the court docket’s resolution makes Jim Crow extra possible, authorized or constitutional.”
If that weren’t presumptuous and conceited sufficient, he stoops to advert hominem assaults towards Sen. Cory Booker by accusing him of demagoguery and implying that he’s a hypocrite as a result of he’s Black and nearly all of his constituents will not be Black. The place did that come from, aside from a determined try to validate the Supreme Courtroom’s Louisiana vs. Callais resolution?
Louis Lipofsky, Beverly Hills
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To the editor: Whereas I don’t essentially align with Goldberg politically, I discover his commentary, each within the Los Angeles Occasions and when he seems on CNN, to be largely considerate and pragmatic. His criticism of Booker’s feedback and accompanying argument that the Voting Rights Act doesn’t mandate majority-minority congressional districts are legitimate. The latest Louisiana vs. Callais resolution is nothing greater than a logical extension of the 2019 Rucho vs. Frequent Trigger resolution, which eliminated federal judicial oversight of partisan gerrymandering claims. The court docket’s opinion, nevertheless, famous that partisan gerrymandering is incompatible with democratic ideas.
The present redistricting frenzy is a race to the underside by each events, whereas acknowledging that President Trump began the ball rolling along with his redistricting request to the Texas governor. The answer to partisan gerrymandering is laws to mandate impartial redistricting commissions, one thing California had earlier than it was briefly put aside in response to redistricting in Texas.
Michael Sanders, Los Alamitos
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To the editor: Currently, I really feel numb from the cognitive dissonance. And but the ultimate query Goldberg poses about why electing a Black senator in a majority non-Black state isn’t the identical factor as racially gerrymandering U.S. congressional districts had me sputtering.
The inhabitants of the whole state votes for senator (reminder: every state will get two), whereas for U.S. Congress, voters solely have the alternatives supplied of their house district. When these districts are artificially gerrymandered, voices and votes are diluted, if not silenced utterly. There’s a distinction between an apple and an orange, despite the fact that one might argue they’re each fruits.
Paula Rudnick, Los Angeles
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To the editor: So Booker is elected in New Jersey by each Black and white residents. New Jersey is within the North. The states main the redistricting efforts to extra white-majority districts are within the South. Learn your historical past, and you’ll perceive the regional distinction (clearly).
Whether or not the Supreme Courtroom is intellectually appropriate or not, I’m not satisfied it has made one of the best name at the moment and place in our historical past. By the best way, I used to be raised within the South.
Larry Furman, Woodland Hills
