If you can get past the reflexive Republican- and conservative-hating (which unfortunately colors the rest of the article, so maybe you can’t, or at least shouldn’t), this article by Cynthia Tucker on racial gerrymandering (via comments here) hits the major problems with such a scheme. Which are: it creates hyper-partisan districts that typically produce absolute clowns for legislators; it allows the Republican party to easily create merely partisan districts for its side; and racial gerrymandering essentially eliminates any need for the Democratic party to take seriously the desires and concerns of African-American voters (the Democrats like having clown legislators, as they’re easier to control).
Mind you, Cynthia Tucker doesn’t take it far enough – but that’s mostly because Cynthia Tucker apparently isn’t fond of white people, or at least white, conservative people. The problem with majority-minority districts is not that that they’re majority-minority districts; it’s that they’re usually hyper-partisan Democratic districts. If voters in them wised up and voted for Republican candidates more often Cynthia Tucker would be amazed at how quickly the Democrats would abandon defending the principle of racial gerrymandering. And – this article aside – she’d probably be a little nauseated, too…