Liveblogging Wood: Racially Safe Districts, As American as Apple Pie

When re-districting occurs, conservatives are often aghast at this "un-American" practice. But the idea that representatives ought to be "like" the people they represent, in as many ways as possible, is as old as America itself:

Actual representation became the key to the peculiarities of American constitutionalism and government. People wanted elected officials that were like them in every way, not only in ideas but in religion, ethnicit, or social class. The people in Philadelphia in 1775 called fo rso many Presbyterians, so many artisans, and so many Germans on the Revolutionary committees. -- The Idea of America, p. 183