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J Miller v. Johnson, 515 U.S., at ___ (slip op., at  Jk 12!13) (Ginsburg, J., dissenting). vBQ Cd  ( , ,  Or take the traditional principle of providing protection for incumbents. The plurality seems to assume that incumbents may always be protected by drawing lines on  J/ the basis of data about political parties. Cf. ante, at 13,/"   16!17. But what if the incumbent has drawn support largely for racial reasons? What, indeed, if the incumbent was elected in a majorityminority district created to remedy vote dilution that resulted from racial bloc voting? It would be sheer fantasy to assume that consideration of race in these circumstances is somehow separable from application of the traditional principle of incumbency protection, and sheer incoherence to think that the consideration of race that is constitutionally required to remedy Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendment vote dilution somehow becomes unconstitutional when aimed at protecting the incumbent the next time the census requires redistricting.  Thus, it is as impossible in theory as in practice to untangle racial consideration from the application of traditional districting principles in a society plagued by  J racialbloc voting%  uB ԍ FTN    XgEpXFr  ddf < Even in areas where there is no racialbloc voting, the application of certain traditional districting principles may involve a legitimate consideration of race. with a racial minority population of political significance, or at least the unrealized potential for achieving it. And it is for just this fundamental reason that a test turning on predominant purpose is incapable of producing any answer when traditional districting principles are applied in the political environ J ment in which Shaw I actions are brought.  9H1 d d,II؃  J  2  Shaw I's recognition of a misuse of race in districting even when no vote dilution results thus rests upon two basic deficiencies: first, the failure to provide a coherent concept of equal protection injury, there being no separably injured class and no concept of harm that would not condemn a constitutionally required remedy for past dilution as well as many of the districting practices that the Court is seeking to preserve; second, the failure to"   provide a coherent test for distinguishing a predominant racial consideration from the application of traditional districting principles in a society whose racial mixture is politically significant and where racialbloc voting exists. The necessary consequence of these shortcomings is arbitrariness; it is impossible to distinguish what is valid from what is not, or to decide how far members of racial minorities may engage in the same sort of pluralist electoral politics that every other bloc of voters enjoys. Karlan, Our Separatism 103. Indeed, if one needed further proof of this arbitrariness,  JH one need go no further than Justice Stevens's dissent in this case. The plurality effectively concedes that  J Justice Stevens has not unfairly applied the principles  J governing the Shaw cause of action, cf. ante, at 17, n. (noting that [i]n the application of our precedents to  J District 30, our disagreement with Justice Stevens'  JX dissent, [ante], at 13!31, is largely factual); in my judgment he has faithfully applied those principles in the spirit intended by the plurality. And yet the conclusions that the two sides reach after applying precisely the same test could not be more different.  Along with this endemic unpredictability has come the destruction of any clear incentive for the States with substantial minority populations to take action to avoid  J vote dilution. Before Shaw, state politicians who recognized that minority vote dilution had occurred, or was likely to occur without redistricting aimed at preventing it, could not only urge their colleagues to do the right thing under the Fourteenth Amendment, but  JP counsel them in terrorem that losing a dilution case would bring liability for counsel fees under 42 U.S.C.  J 1988(b) or 42 U.S.C. 1973l(e). See Issacharoff, Constitutional Contours 48 ( Minority political actors could leverage not only their political power but the enforcement provisions of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, and the threat of suit under Section 2 of the Act`"    J against adverse districting decisions); cf. Hastert v.  J Illinois State Bd. of Election Commr's, 28 F. 3d 1430, 1444 (CA7 1993) (awarding fees to the prevailing parties in a case in which the state legislature failed to draw congressional districts, over the Board of Elections's objection that it had no interest in the eventual  J outcome except that there be an outcome for it to implement) (emphasis in original). But this argument is blunted now, perhaps eliminated in practice, by the  J risk of counsel fees in a Shaw I action. States seeking to comply in good faith with the requirements of federal civil rights laws now find themselves walking a tightrope: if they draw majorityblack districts they face lawsuits under the equal protection clause; if they do not, they face both objections under section 5 of the Voting Rights Act and lawsuits under section 2.  J Karlan, PostShaw Era 289. See ante, at 38 (Stevens, J., dissenting) ( On one hand, States will risk violating the Voting Rights Act if they fail to create majorityminority districts. If they create those districts, how J ever, they may open themselves to liability under Shaw and its progeny.). The States, in short, have been told to get things just right, no dilution and no predominant consideration of race short of dilution, without being told how to do it. The tendency of these conflicting incentives is toward a stalemate, and neither the moral force of the Constitution nor the mercenary threat of liability can operate effectively in this obscurity.  As a consequence, where once comprehensible districting obligations confronted the legislators and governors of the States, there is now a vacuum of responsibility in any State with the mixed population  J from which Shaw suits come. We can no longer say with the old assurance that such States have a duty to comply with federal requirements in districting, since a State, like an individual, can hardly be blamed for failing to fulfill an obligation that has never been`"   explained. It is true, of course, that a State may suffer consequences if the ultimate arbiter decides on a result different from the one the State has put in place, but that bad luck does not change the fact that a State cannot be said to be obliged to apply a standard that has not been revealed. Because the responsibility for the result can only be said to rest with the final arbiter, the practical responsibility over districting has simply shifted from the political branches of the States with mixed populations to the courts, and to this Court in particular. The Court has apparently set itself upon a course of ... reviewing challenged districts one by one and issuing opinions that depend so idiosyncratically on the unique facts of each case that they provide no real guidance to either lower courts or legislatures. Karlan,  J PostShaw Era 288. The tragedy in this shift of political responsibility lies not only in the fact of its occurrence in this instance, but in the absence of coherent or persuasive justifications for causing it to occur.  9H1 d dy,III؃  D2  Although today's cases do not address the uncertain JN ties that stem from Shaw's underlying incoherence, they do aim to mitigate its inscrutability with some specific rules.  ;H2 d d-A؃  2  In each of today's cases, the Court expressly assumes that avoiding a violation of the Voting Rights Act qualifies as a sufficiently compelling government interest to  J satisfy the requirements of strict scrutiny. See ante, at 22!23 ( As we have done in each of our three previous cases ... we assume without deciding that compliance with the results test [of section 2 of the Voting Rights  J, Act] ... can be a compelling state interest); Shaw II,  J ante, at 15 ( We assume, arguendo, for the purpose of resolving this case, that compliance with 2 could be a compelling interest). While the Court's decision to"    J assume this important point arguendo is no holding, see  J Seminole Tribe of Fla. v. Florida, 517 U.S. ___, ___ (1996) (Souter, J., dissenting) (slip op., at 28), the assumption itself is encouraging because it confirms the view that the intentional creation of majorityminority  J8 districts is not necessarily a violation of Shaw I, ante, at 3 (strict scrutiny does not apply to all cases of intentional creation of majorityminority districts), and it indicates that the Court does not intend to bring the  J Shaw cause of action to what would be the cruelly ironic point of finding in the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (as amended) a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection guarantee. Cf. Pildes & Niemi, 92 Mich. L. Rev., at 498 (observing that [i]f the Court believed there were serious constitutional questions with the fundamental structure of this scheme, the Court had numerous means to avoid permitting an unconstitutionally composed legislature to assume power, and seeing  J0 the reservation of this question in Voinovich v. Quilter, 507 U.S., at 157, as evidence that a majority of the Court is not prepared to find a general ban on race J conscious districting in the Constitution). Justice  J O'Connor's separate opinion, ante, at ___, bears on each of these points all the more emphatically, for her view  J@ that compliance with 2 is (not just arguendo) a compelling state interest and her statement of that position virtually insulate the Voting Rights Act from  J jeopardy under Shaw as such.  ;H2 d d-B؃  2  The second point of reference to come out of today's cases is the rule that if a State begins its mapdrawing efforts with a compact majorityminority district required  J by Gingles, the State may not rely too heavily on racial data in adjusting that district to serve traditional districting principles. While this rule may indeed provide useful guidance to state legislatures, its inherent"    J weakness is clear from what was said above, supra, at 18!20: it is in theory and in fact impossible to apply traditional districting principles in areas with substantial minority populations without considering race. As to some of those principles, to be sure, the ban on the overuse of racial data may not have much significance; racially identified communities can be identified in other ways and will be, after today. But protecting a minority incumbent may be another matter, since we cannot assume, as the plurality does, that reliance on information about party affiliation will serve to protect a minority incumbent, and we cannot tell when use of  J racial data will go too far on the plurality's view, ante, at 7. It therefore may well be that loss of the capacity to protect minority incumbency is the price of the rule limiting States' use of racial data. If so, it will be an exceedingly odd result, when the whole point of creating yesterday's majorityminority district was to remedy prior dilution, thus permitting the election of the minority incumbent who (the Court now seems to declare) cannot be protected as any other incumbent could be.  ;H2 d d-C؃  2  The third point of reference attributable to today's cases is as yet only a possibility; a suggestion in the discussions of the narrow tailoring test that States seeking to avoid violating 2 of the Voting Rights Act may draw the district that the Voting Rights Act com J6 pels, and this district alone. See Shaw II, ante, at 15!18 (rejecting North Carolina's District 12 because it  J does not sufficiently coincide with the assumed Gingles  J district); ante, at 36 (Stevens, J., dissenting) ( It now seems clear that the only way that a State can both create a majorityminority district and avoid a racial gerrymander is by drawing ... within the `limited degree of leeway' granted by the Court ... the precise"   compact district that a court would impose in a successful 2 challenge). If the Court were to say that a district drawn to avoid dilution must respond to the dilution threat in some geographically exact way, but see  J` Shaw II, ante, at 16!17, n.8 (suggesting that States may have flexibility in complying with 2 of the Voting  J Rights Act); ante, at 31!33 (Stevens, J., dissenting) (noting that States traditionally have enjoyed a broader discretion in drawing district lines), then presumably a district drawn in a raceconscious fashion could survive  Jp only if it was as compact as the Gingles district hypothesized for purposes of stating a votedilution claim, and positioned where the hypothetical district would be.  If the Court ultimately were to reach such a conclusion, it would in one respect be taking a step back  J toward Shaw I and its suggestion that a district's shape might play an important, if not determinative role in establishing a cause of action. Such a step would,  J0 however, do much more than return to Shaw I, which suggested that a compact district would be a safe haven,  J but not that the district hypothesized under Gingles was  J the only haven. See, e.g., Shaw I, 509 U.S., at 646 ( The district lines may be drawn, for example, to provide for compact districts of contiguous territory, or to maintain the integrity of political subdivisions)  I refer to this step as a possibility deliberately. The  J Court in Shaw II does not go beyond an intimation to  J this effect, and Bush raises doubt that the Court would  J go so far. See ante, at 23!24 (rejecting the argument  Jx made by Justice Stevens); see also ante, at 24 ( the States retain flexibility that federal courts enforcing 2 lack .... And nothing that we say today should be read as limiting `a State's discretion to apply traditional  J districting principles' ! ); but see ante, at 6 (O'Connor, J., concurring) ( if a State pursues that compelling interest by creating a district that `substantially addresses' the potential liability, and does not deviate substantially`"   from a hypothetical courtdrawn 2 district for predominantly racial reasons, its districting plan will be deemed  J narrowly tailored (citations omitted); but see also ante, at 23 ( We also reaffirm that the `narrow tailoring' requirement of strict scrutiny allows the States a limited degree of leeway in furthering such interests.... We thus reject, as impossibly stringent, the District Court's view of the narrow tailoring requirement, that `a district must have the least possible amount of irregularity in shape, making allowances for traditional districting  Jp criteria'  !  (citation omitted)). Indeed, Bush leaves open the possibility that a State could create a majority J minority district that does not coincide with the Gingles  J shape so long as racial data is not overused, ante, at 7,  J 27, and it does not suggest that a Shaw claim could be  J premised solely on a deviation from a Gingles district.  Suffice it to say for now that if the Court were to try  JX to render Shaw more definite by imposing any such limitations on shape and placement, the added measure of clarity would either be elusive or it would come at an exorbitant price from States seeking to comply with the Voting Rights Act and the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. It would be elusive if the Court meant that race could be considered in alleviating racial dilution but not in applying any traditional districting principle: we have already seen that race is inextricably intertwined with some common districting principles  J when applied in a multiracial society. See supra, at 18!20. Or it would come at an exorbitant price, because no other districting principle would be allowed to affect the compactness or placement that would be required for  J( purposes of Gingles. The Court would thus be cutting back on a State's power to vary district shape through its application of the very districting principles that are supposed to predominate in importance over racial consideration. That is, the Court would be reducing the discretion of a State seeking to avoid or correct dilution`"   to the scope of a federal court's discretion when devising a remedy for dilution. There could, of course, be no justification for taking any such step. While there is good reason to limit a federal court's discretion to interfere in a State's political process when it employs  J8 its remedial power in dilution cases, cf. Voinovich v.  J Quilter, 507 U.S., at 156 ( Federal courts are barred from intervening in state apportionment in the absence of a violation of federal law precisely because it is the domain of the States ... to conduct apportionment), there is no apparent reason to impose the same limitations upon the discretion accorded to a State subject to an independent constitutional duty to make apportion J ment decisions, see ibid. ( Because the States ... derive their reapportionment authority ... from independent provisions of state and federal law,...the federal courts are bound to respect the States' apportionment choices unless those choices contravene federal requirements) (internal quotation marks omitted). The principles of federalism that we have tried to follow strongly counsel against imposing any such limitations.  ;H2 d d-D؃  2  In sum, the three steps the Court takes today toward a more definite cause of action either fail to answer the  J objections to Shaw I or prompt objections of their own. Recognition of a State's interest in complying with the Voting Rights Act does not address the practical impossibility courts will encounter in identifying a predominant use of race, as distinguished from some lesser, reasonable consideration of it, when a State applies its customary districting principles. The limitation on the use of racial data is unlikely to make much difference in practice except to jeopardize minority incumbency protection.  Jn And the possibility that the Court will require Gingles districts (or districts substantially close to them) when compliance with 2 of the Voting Rights Act is an object"   of districting would render a State's districting obligation more definite only by eliminating its ability to apply the very districting principles traditionally considered to be important enough to furnish a theoretical baseline of reasonable districting practices.  9H1 d d,IV؃  Jt  t2  If today's developments fall short of curing Shaw's unworkability, it must be said that options for address JV ing them are few. Assuming that Shaw is not to be overruled as a flawed experiment, the Court may select from two alternatives, depending on whether its weightier concern is to preserve traditional districting princi J ples or to cure the anomalies created by Miller's predominant purpose criterion.  Jf  If the Court's first choice is to preserve Shaw in some guise with the least revolutionary effect on districting principles and practice, the Court could give primacy to the principle of compactness and define the limits of tolerance for unorthodox district shape by imposing a measurable limitation on the bizarre, presumably chosen by reference to historical practice (adjusted to eliminate the influence of any dilution that very practice may have caused in the past, cf. Pildes & Niemi, 92 Mich. L. Rev., at 573!574, n. 246 (discussing the egregious racial gerrymanders of the 19th century)) and calculated on the basis of a district's dispersion, perimeter, and population.  J See id., at 553!575. This alternative would be true to  J^ Shaw I in maintaining that a point can be reached when the initially lawful consideration of race becomes unreasonable and in identifying appearance as the expression of undue consideration; and it would elimi J nate Miller's impossible obligation to untangle racial considerations from socalled raceneutral objectives (such as according respect to community integrity and protecting the seats of incumbents) when the racial composition of a district and voter behavior bar any"   practical chance of separating them. The incongruities  J of Shaw's concept of injury when considered in light of our customary equal protection analysis, our remedial practice, and traditional respect for state districting  J` discretion would, of course, persist, but if Shaw were defined by measures that identified forbidden shape as the manifestation of unreasonable racial emphasis, we would at least provide the notice and guidance that are missing from the law today.  J  The other alternative for retaining a Shaw cause of action in some guise would be to accept the fact that, in the kind of polarized multiracial societies that will  J generate Shaw actions as presently understood, racial considerations are inseparable from many traditional districting objectives, making it impossible to speak of race as predominating. The consequence of facing this reality is that if some consideration of race is to be forbidden as supposedly unreasonable in degree, then the use of districting principles that implicate the use of race must be forbidden. That is, traditional districting practices must be eliminated. Such a result would, of  J course, be consistent with Shaw I's concept of injury as  J affecting voters of whatever race. But cf. Valley Forge  Jh Christian College v. Americans United for Separation of  J@ Church and State, Inc., 454 U.S. 464, 489 (1982) (fact that some expressive harms are insufficient to satisfy Article III standing requirements does not allow for relaxation of those requirements). The result, in short, would be colorblindness in determining the manner of choosing representatives, either by eliminating the practice of districting entirely, or by replacing it with districting on some principle of randomness that would not account for race in any way.  J  While such is the direction in which Shaw and Miller together point, the objections to following any such course seem insurmountable. The first is the irony that the price of imposing a principle of colorblindness in the`"   name of the Fourteenth Amendment would be submerging the votes of those whom the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments were adopted to protect, precisely the problem that necessitated our recognition of vote dilution as a constitutional violation in the first place. Eliminating districting in the name of colorblindness would produce total submersion; random submersion (or packing) would result from districting by some computerized process of colorblind randomness. Thus, unless the attitudes that produce racial bloc voting were eliminated along with traditional districting principles, dilution would once again become the norm. While dilution as an intentional constitutional violation would be eliminated by a randomly districted system, this theoretical nicety would be overshadowed by the concrete reality that the result of such a decision would almost inevitably be a socalled representative Congress with some JX thing like 17 black members. See supra, at 7. In any event, the submergence would violate the prohibition of even nonintentional dilution found in 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The only way to avoid this conflict would be to declare the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional, a prospect hardly in harmony with the Court's readiness to assume today that compliance with the Voting Rights Act qualifies as a compelling state interest for purposes  J of litigating a Shaw claim.  The second objection is equally clear. Whatever may  J be the implications of what I have called Shaw's fail J ings, the Court has repeatedly made it plain that Shaw was in no way intended to effect a revolution by eliminating traditional districting practice for the sake of  J( colorblindness. Shaw I, 509 U.S., at 642 ( Despite their invocation of the ideal of a colorblind Constitution, see  J Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537, 559 (1896) (Harlan, J., dissenting), appellants appear to concede that raceconscious districting is not always unconstitutional.... That concession is wise: This Court never has held that`"   raceconscious state decisionmaking is impermissible in  J all circumstances); cf. Richmond v. J.A. Croson Co., 488  J U.S. 469, 520!521 (1989) (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment) (criticizing the majority for rejecting a strict  J` principle of colorblindness). Indeed, the very fear that  J8 led to the creation of the Shaw cause of action was that racial concerns were taking too heavy a toll on districting practices that had evolved over the years  J through the political process. Shaw I, 509 U.S., at  J 644!649. Justice O'Connor, moreover, has made it obvious that race has a legitimate place in districting,  JH Shaw I, supra, at 642 ( raceconscious redistricting is  J not always unconstitutional); Miller, 515 U.S., at ___  J Ԛ(O'Connor, J., concurring) (slip. op., at 2); ante, at 4  J (O'Connor, J., concurring), that the intentional creation  J of majorityminority districts is not forbidden by Shaw,  J Miller, 515 U.S., at ___ (slip op., at 2) (O'Connor, J., concurring) (districts may be permissible even though race may well have been considered in the redistricting  J process); ante, at 1!4 (O'Connor, J., concurring), and  J that Shaw was aimed at only the exceptional district, 515 U.S., at ___ (slip op., at 2) ( Application of the Court's standard does not throw into doubt the vast majority of the Nation's 435 congressional districts). Of  J@ the present Court majority, only Justices Scalia and  J Thomas are on record as concluding that any intentional creation of a majorityminority district is a forbidden  J racial gerrymander. Ante, at 3 (Thomas, J., concurring in judgment).  Since a radical transformation of the political selection process in the name of colorblindness is out of the  J( question, the Court's options for dealing with Shaw's unworkability are in truth only these: to confine the cause of action by adopting a quantifiable shape test or to eliminate the cause of action entirely. Because even  J a truncated Shaw would rest on the untenable founda J` tion I have described, and the supposed, expressive harm`"    J Shaw seeks to remedy is unlikely to justify the disrup J tion that even a modified Shaw would invite, there is presently no good reason that the Court's withdrawal from the presently untenable state of the law should not  J` be complete. While I take the commands of stare decisis  J8 very seriously, the problems with Shaw and its progeny are themselves very serious. The Court has been unable to provide workable standards, the chronic uncertainty has begotten no discernible reliance, and the costs of persisting doubt about the limits of state discretion and state responsibility are high.  JH  There is, indeed, an added reason to admit Shaw's failure in providing a manageable constitutional standard and to allow for some faith in the political process. That process not only evolved the very traditional districting principles that the Court has pledged to preserve, but has applied them in the past to deal with ethnicity in a way that should influence our thinking about the prospects for race. It is difficult to see how  J the consideration of race that Shaw condemns (but cannot avoid) is essentially different from the consideration of ethnicity that entered American politics from the moment that immigration began to temper regional homogeneity. Recognition of the ethnic character of neighborhoods and incumbents, through the application of just those districting principles we now view as traditional, allowed ethnically identified voters and their preferred candidates to enter the mainstream of Ameri J can politics, see Miller, supra, at ___ (slip op., at 14!15)  Jx (Ginsburg, J., dissenting); D. Judd, The Politics of American Cities: Private Power and Public Policy 70 (3d ed. 1988); see generally S. Erie, Rainbow's End: IrishAmericans and the Dilemmas of Urban Machine Politics, 1840!1985 (1988), and to attain a level of political power in American democracy. The result has been not a state regime of ethnic apartheid, but ethnic participation and even a moderation of ethnicity's divisive effect in` "   political practice. For although consciousness of ethnicity has not disappeared from the American electorate, its talismanic force does appear to have cooled over  J time.+  uB ԍ FTN    XgEpXFr  ddf < See Karst, Paths to Belonging: The Constitution and Cultural Identity, 64 N.C. L. Rev. 303, 347, 350 (1986) ( [T]he surest path to assimilation is participation in the larger society's activities and institutions. Voting is not just an expression of political preferences; it is an assertion of belonging to a political community.... When legislative districts are defined in ways that exclude the possibility of significant minority representation, potential minority voters see that their votes are not worth casting. Yet electoral mobilization is vital ... to the group members' perceptions that they belong to the community); Walzer, Pluralism in Political Perspective, in The Politics of Ethnicity 1, 18 (S. Thernstrom, A. Orlov, & O. Handlin eds. 1982) ( political life is in principle open, and this openness has served to diffuse the most radical forms of ethnic competition); Kantowicz, Voting and Parties, in The Politics  uB of Ethnicity, supra, at 29, 45 (noting that political successes and recognition made members of an ethnic group feel that it belonged in the wider society ... [and brought] them inside the political system); Mintz, Ethnicity and Leadership: An Afterword, in Ethnic Leadership in America 198 (J. Higham ed. 1978) (concluding after reviewing several studies of ethnic politics that we ignore at our peril the need to understand those processes by which being shortchanged ... politically can became any group's motto or battle standard); cf. Karlan, Our Separatism 102 ( two generations of communist suppression and ethnic and religious tension in Yugoslavia did little to ensure stability, tolerance, or integration).+ It took Boston Irish voters, for example, to elect  J` Thomas Menino mayor in 1993. J`o uB ԍ FTN  &  XgEpXFr  ddf < See, e.g., Nolan, Boston Mayoral Race Could Break Dominance of Ethnicity, Boston Globe, Apr. 9, 1993, p. 40 ( When Boston finishes choosing a new mayor, the city may discover that after centuries of immigration, ethnicity is no longer the dominant factor in its politics); Black, OnceSolid Voting Blocks are Splitting in Boston, Boston Globe, Nov. 1, 1993, p. 1 (commenting that voters consider Menino's Italian descent little more than a historical footnote and observing that ethnic voting has faded ... [a]s various groups enter the American economic and social mainstream ... [and] gain some semblance of [political] power); D'Innocenzo, Gulotta Can't Count on Ethnicity, Newsday, Oct. 19, 1993, p. 97 "## (noting that [t]he vowel at the end of Tom Gulotta's name may not matter in this year's county executive election as it once did because ItalianAmericans in Nassau County are likely to go to the polls with more than ethnic favoritism in mind; attributing the decline in ethnicitybased voting to the fact that Nassau ItalianAmericans feel less marginali[zed] as an ethnic group).`! "  Ԍ There is, then, some reason to hope that if vote dilution is attacked at the same time that race is given the recognition that ethnicity has historically received in American politics, the force of race in politics will also moderate in time. There are even signs that such hope may be vindicated, even if the evidence is necessarily tentative as yet. See U.S. Comm'n on Civil Rights, The Voting Rights Act: Ten Years After, p. 155 (Jan. 1975) ( In many areas the great increase in minority registration and voting since the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965 has meant that politicians can no longer afford to ignore minority voters. This has brought about a significant decline in racial appeals by candidates and has made incumbents and candidates more responsive to minority needs); Carsey, The Contextual Effects of Race on White Voter Behavior: The 1989 New York City Mayoral Election, 57 J. of Politics 221, 228 (1995) (reporting, in 1994, that the contextual effects of race may not be so different from the contextual effects of factors like partisanship, ethnicity, or social class as we might have believed); Sigelman, Sigelman, Walkosz, & Nitz, Black Candidates, White Voters: Understanding Racial Bias in Political Perceptions, 39 Am. J. of Political Science 243, 244 (1995) ( Over the years, white Americans have expressed increasing willingness to vote for black candidates); Peirce, Fresh Air in City Hall, Baltimore Sun, Nov. 8, 1993, p. 7A ( In contest after contest, victory has gone to mayoral candidates who  J eschew talk of race); see also Gingles, 478 U.S., at 56 (noting that crossover voting in favor of minorityx" "   candidates is more common when minority incumbents  J stand for reelection); Collins v. Norfolk, 883 F.2d 1232, 1243 (CA4 1989) (same). This possibility that racial politics, too, may grow wiser so long as minority votes are rescued from submergence should be considered in determining how far the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments require us to devise constitutional common law to supplant the democratic process with litigation in federal courts. It counsels against accepting the profes J sion that Shaw has yet evolved into a manageable constitutional standard, and from that case's invocation again today I respectfully dissent.