Nashville, TN (TN Tribune)–The Tennessee State Conference of the NAACP (also referred to as the Tennessee NAACP) is opposed to the redistricting plans approved by the House Select Committee on Redistricting. The Select Committee’s plans harm Black voters and communities.
The House redistricting plan for the 99 districts approved on December 17 intentionally targets and seeks to remove Black incumbent lawmakers in Memphis, Nashville, and Knoxville. The adopted plan for congressional districts approved on January 12 is the most extreme of the proposals. It removes the eastern part of Shelby County from the 9th congressional district and puts this area in a district that stretches 140 miles east to Henry County. The most offensive part of the plan splits Nashville-Davidson County into three congressional districts and gives rural counties undue influence in who will represent Tennessee’s largest and most economically-thriving city.
This congressional plan has the distinct feature of harming Black voters in Nashville-Davidson County:
· It significantly dilutes the Black vote in the county. It creates three districts covering parts of Nashville-Davidson County with Black voting-age-populations of only 11.8% (5th district), 8.6% (6th district), and 15.5% (7th district). These percentages are significantly lower than the make-up of Blacks in the current congressional district.
· The district (7th) with the highest percentage of voting-age Blacks (15.5%) has several correctional institutions/prisons that inflate the percentage of Blacks.
· The Select Committee’s plan dilutes the strongest base of Black urban voters in Middle Tennessee by placing them in lily-White, rural districts that are remote—as far as 103 miles—from Nashville-Davidson County. It takes Black voting neighborhoods in Bordeaux and northern Davidson County and places them in a newly-created district comprising 12 other counties. Eleven of these counties are rural and supermajority with populations ranging from 88-95%. The 12th county (Montgomery County) is 70% White.
· The proposed redistricting plan creates an excessively gerrymandered district (the 5th) that stretches from Wilson County to Marshall County. The district cuts into Southeast Nashville-Davidson County and its growing base of racial minorities.
The Select Committee’s plan harms the communities of interests of voters in Davidson County, particularly Black voters.
“It undermines the equal protection of Black voters in ways that we have not seen in decades in Tennessee,” stated Gloria Sweet-Love, President of the Tennessee NAACP.
The redistricting plans show that the Select Committee was never committed to transparency and community input. The NAACP met with the Chair of the committee. We partnered with other groups to host redistricting hearings and meetings across the state. The dominant position from these meetings—a position that the NAACP expressed to the Chair—was to keep counties together for congressional districts.
The TN NAACP is calling on the authorizing committees in both the House and the Senate, as well as the Governor, to reject the Select Committee’s plan. The NAACP stands with African-American voters and opposes the Select Committee’s redistricting plans that attempt to deny African Americans from fully maximizing their vote.
