Except that it uses non-gerrymandered districts from California, where elected officials are not allowed to draw the lines. So any statement is lost, but I guess it’s a fun art project.
Also district shaping is more complex than you might think.
For instance some distracts were purposely built around a minority groups neighborhoods so that they would have a representative. If you made the districts purely based on grids then the group would be too small to have any representative.
Which maybe is the wrong solution. But you get funky district shapes for all sorts of reasons that are not the corruption people typically think of.
A lot of times they do this to isolate voters in one district. You make 1-2 compact districts like GA-5, that contains a large number of Democratic voters (and black people), like 90% margin. Then you surround it with gerrymandered districts and make them nearly but not quite competitive, like 55% Republican white suburban. Thus the same population of Republicans can have 4 or 5 districts while the Democrats get 1 or 2.
Isn't it interesting that folks will justify gerrymandering when it's built to support a minority group, unless that minority group is the one particular subset of the population who aren't generally allowed specific representation?
This is exactly how the current wave of gerrymandering began. The mandate to create "majority-minority" districts led to the concentration of districts that favored minorities (Democrats) but at the same time created two or three districts with sizable (but not insanely so) Republican districts.
From the Atlantic:
"But just in time for the redistricting in 1990, some enterprising Republicans began noticing a rather curious fact: The drawing of majority-minority districts not only elected more minorities, it also had the effect of bleeding minority voters out of all the surrounding districts. Given that minority voters were the most reliably Democratic voters, that made all of the neighboring districts more Republican. The black, Latino, and Asian representatives mostly were replacing white Democrats, and the increase in minority representation was coming at the expense of electing fewer Democrats. "
That is because what you are referring to as "one particular subset of the population who aren't generally allowed specific representation" does not need any help in making sure they have representation. One, they are not (currently) a minority and two, they have the vast majority of the power in this country already.
I'm confused about why being a minority means you need more help? Are they not as capable as the rest of us? Why do you think they are so disadvantaged as to require special education and assistance? I mean we're not talking case by case basis here, your sentiments were clearly blanketed statements.
>I'm confused about why being a minority means you need more help?
In simple terms, many minority groups in America have been forcefully and intentionally disadvantaged for generations through programs like redlining, segregation, the so-called war on drugs, gerrymandering, and hundreds of other racist schemes designed to deprive minority citizens of the same rights and privileges you and your ancestors were afforded solely based on the colour of their skin.
And I would hope that you can understand why centuries of systemic oppression would have a lasting effect that needs more than just words to address.
yours would best be described as the 'naive' take on the situation, and rests on a false premise.
These minorities need 'help' in that a majority is going to be self-interested and lacking compassion or any sort of integrity at larger scope.
In the U.S. this might take the form of tax loopholes for speedboats and golf memberships eating into funding for basic social services (infrastructure, law enforcement, education resources and such) on the other side of town.
If you can unpack the above and place yourself in the shoes of the people on the bad end of that deal, you might start to get the idea.
There will always be a majority and there will always be a minority. But the thought process behind, "they are a minority, therefore they need assistance" is elitism at best and racism at worst. Furthermore, the laws that we pass that give special treatment to one group over another make that divide all the more permanent.
Only three letters in this project include California; only the letters T and X are represented exclusively by California. The statement is powerful and hilarious, not "lost."
There isn't a third. There are two, T (made up of one district) and X (made of two).
If the point of this project was to call attention to ridiculously-shaped gerrymandered districts, these are some of the last districts that should ever be considered for inclusion.
Be that as it may, it substantially undermines the premise of the work, which is presumably, "Gerrymandering is so rampant that you can make an entire alphabetic font out of gerrymandered districts".
Districts look idiosyncratic no matter how they are drawn, so I’m not sure this works as a statement. Perhaps if the font were updated over time to match the changes due to gerrymandering, the font would become less and less readable, and that would seemingly be some sort of statement.
I’m not sure if gerrymandering is all that bad. Wait, what’s this, a font made out of gerrymandered districts? It must be really bad, we should do something about it. Except the T doesn’t look that great, and it’s from California anyway. Maybe this isn’t such a big deal after all. And the Q! The Q is barely even gerrymandered. Fuck it, I’m gonna go play some video games.
For instance some distracts were purposely built around a minority groups neighborhoods so that they would have a representative. If you made the districts purely based on grids then the group would be too small to have any representative.
Which maybe is the wrong solution. But you get funky district shapes for all sorts of reasons that are not the corruption people typically think of.