Unintended consequences: How majority-minority districts hurt President Obama's agenda

A prescient John Fund, wrote this in June 2010 in the WSJ ("Racial Gerrymandering Backfires")

most of the 70 competitive House races polled by NPR (as well as most of the states with the closest Senate races) have below-average populations of black voters. Racial gerrymandering justified by dubious interpretations of the Voting Rights Act has concentrated blacks into mostly safe Democratic districts, meaning now that most competitive seats are more white than average. These districts are more likely to be hostile to President Obama's agenda, and thus more likely to be treacherous political terrain for Democrats. No wonder party strategists are so worried about this fall.

My suspicion is racial gerrymandering helps minorities in the short run, but hurts them in the long run.

Wikipedia on majority-minority districts:

The value of gerrymandering to create majority-minority districts is a matter of dispute both within and outside of minority communities. Some view majority-minority districts as a way to dilute the voting power of minorities and analogous to racial segregation

More from AEI on unintended consequences of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, here.