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11. Race, Representation, and Legitimacy
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11 Race, Representation, and Legitimacy The history of minority participation in the political process of Dallas is not one of choice; it is a record of what blacks and Hispanics have been permitted to do by the white majority. U.S. District Judge Jerry Buchmeyer The System in Crisis When Council member Al Lipscomb threw his chair and stalked out of the Council chamber on May 11, 1991, it was a symbol of more than the frustration and outrage of blacks at one more delay in Dallas’s tortured journey toward compliance with the federal Voting Rights Act. Throwing chairs was a good metaphor for the way in which the city dealt with the problem of redesigning Council districts so that blacks and Hispanics, who made up half of the population by 1990, had a chance to elect Council members they preferred. The struggle to create a fairer system of representation provides a remarkable opportunity to understand how Dallas civic culture influenced the city’s approach to a key institution for developing civic capital. From 1975, when eight single member districts and three at-large council positions were created, until 1991, black voters were “packed” into two districts. Blacks had comprised about 30 percent of the total population since 1980 but no black had ever been elected to any of the three at-large seats. 286 Race, Representation, and Legitimacy 287 Hispanics, who comprised one-eighth of the population in 1980, never had a “safe” district, although Hispanics had been elected from time to time in one of the single-member districts. Business-supported Hispanics had also been elected to an at-large seat. The use of numbered positions for the atlarge council seats prevented bullet voting by minorities to elect independent candidates whom they favored. The cost of citywide campaigns inhibited minority candidates from even seeking election at-large. The 8–3 system of representation had been designed to render moot a lawsuit brought by Lipscomb against the atlarge system following the 1970 census. As the 1990 Census approached, minority leaders realized that for the first time, the combined black and Hispanic population could exceed the Anglo population. But unless the system was changed substantially , the Council was unlikely to reflect the demographic shift. The U.S. Supreme Court had recently interpreted the 1982 amendments to the Voting Rights Act to require that electoral systems provide minorities with an opportunity to elect representatives of their choice if it were proved that electoral schemes and patterns of voting were racially polarized and resulted in discrimination.1 Dallas black activists began to threaten legal action. These threats, along with the dramatic racial confrontations involving the police, brought the city to crisis. There was widespread agreement among opinion leaders that some further accommodation of minority demands for fairness was necessary . Mayor Annette Strauss consulted with business and minority leaders and, in 1988, convened “Dallas Together,” a tri-ethnic task force of over eighty members, and charged it with making recommendations to improve racial harmony. In its final report, Dallas Together targeted education, employment opportunities, and minority representation on the City Council as central interracial issues the city must address. As the report was being written, two black civic gadflies, Roy Williams and Marvin Crenshaw, filed suit in federal district [3.238.195.81] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 16:53 GMT) 288 Chapter 11 court, alleging that the 8–3 system violated minority rights under the Voting Rights Act. Hispanic plaintiffs soon intervened in the suit. It was clear that if the city did not reform its system of Council representation it faced the unwelcome prospect of having it done by a federal court. The Charter Advisory Committee2 After receiving the task force report in late February 1989, the City Council appointed a Charter Advisory Committee to recommend revisions to the council election system that could be approved by the voters, rendering the lawsuit moot. The mayor chose Ray Hutchison to chair the committee. Hutchison , a senior partner of one of the city’s large law firms, and a leading figure in business and public affairs, had chaired the representation subcommittee of Dallas Together, which strongly recommended scrapping the 8–3 system for a system that would be more representative of the city’s diverse population. A native of Dallas’s working class Pleasant Grove community, he seemed an ideal choice. He had been one of the first Dallas Republicans elected to the Texas Legislature and later chaired the...