Overview

Race and Partisanship in California Redistricting: From the 1965 Voting Rights Act to Present studies redistricting and its evolution in California since the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. It poses the question: What is the interactive play of race and partisanship in redefining the meaning of political representation through redistricting? Unlike other studies of redistricting, it focuses not on the South but on the West, not on White versus Black, but on the difficulties of diversity. It tells the story of redistricting in California, which has now become one of the most left-leaning states and is considered a harbinger of political trends in the United States. Ultimately, this is a book that looks forward by looking backward at the tug-and-pull of redistricting efforts aimed at ensuring greater equality in a racially diverse democracy and asks: What is the role played by race and partisanship in the voting rights revolution? How does that vary far from the traditional flashpoints of American race relations? What does that tell us about the redefinition of political representation in the past half-century? And––most crucially––what does it foretell, for the next half century?

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9781498585927

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Reviews

If you want to understand the tangled connections between law and politics, resistance and reform, and above all, race and partisanship, in the last 50 years of politics in the American states, start here. Appropriate for students and interested lay readers, as well as for scholars of redistricting and the politics of race, this book is a key to understanding how politics has worked in the nation's largest state in the recent past and how it might work throughout the nation in the future. -- Morgan Kousser, Caltech

If you want to understand the tangled connections between law and politics, resistance and reform, and above all, race and partisanship, in the last 50 years of politics in the American states, start here. Appropriate for students and interested lay readers, as well as for scholars of redistricting and the politics of race, this book is a key to understanding how politics has worked in the nation's largest state in the recent past and how it might work throughout the nation in the future. -- Morgan Kousser, Caltech In Race and Partisanship in California Redistricting Olivier Richomme studies 50 years of redistricting state legislative and U.S. House districts. In great detail and with extensive documentation, he examines the processes employed to revise these districts, the contentious politics involved in doing so, and the resulting districts, which were often alleged to be either racial gerrymanders, partisan gerrymanders, or both. But Richomme does not stop there: he also provides considerable attention to important contemporary developments affecting redistricting in California. -- Richard L. Engstrom, Duke University

“If you want to understand the tangled connections between law and politics, resistance and reform, and above all, race and partisanship, in the last 50 years of politics in the American states, start here.  Appropriate for students and interested lay readers, as well as for scholars of  redistricting and the politics of race, this book is a key to understanding how politics has worked in the nation’s largest state in the recent past and how it might work throughout the nation in the future.” -- Morgan Kousser, Caltech

Author Information

Olivier Richomme is associate professor of American history at the University of Lyon.

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