Gerrymandering Essay

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Gerrymandering

When I thought of the topic Gerrymandering, I thought perhaps it would be too far-fetched when it came to the Rubric designed in a women studies class. But, on further review of the subject matter I realized how important this practice is to study, and how it can be used for both good and evil concepts in the political scheme of things.
Gerrymandering is a form of boundary redistricting, in which the boundaries of an electoral district or constituency are modified for electoral purposes, often producing a contorted or unusual shape. The resulting district is known as a Gerrymander. Gerrymandering is used as a potential way to achieve desired electoral results for a particular party, or may be used to …show more content…
The problem is, Chicago has two completely distinct and geographically separate Hispanic neighborhoods—one Puerto Rican, the other Mexican---but neither is large enough to constitute a district majority on its own. This lumping of all Hispanics together into a supposed coherent cultural group, then carefully draw a line surrounding every single Hispanic household in Chicago, creating one large Hispanic district ensuring a definite Hispanic legislature to come out of that district. But in doing so, they have limited themselves by having only one vote in the electorate. Double edged sword I suppose in this, gain a politician who holds your values and views, but alienating your district to one voice. It’s clear the powers that be are in control on this idea, as whoever is in power at the time of the re-districting they will use demographics to their advantage. Democrat’s and republican’s treat it as a game of chess, to see who will win in the end. In this they both agree and strive to avoid each other’s “power demographic” they hope to one-up the other.
In trying to make this topic about class issues I feel I have done so on the ethnic part at least, but to bring it to the idea of women’s issues one must look deeper at the root of the problem of political games and realize that the demographic of women are still not looked at in the political aspirations of our leaders. So times have not changed so much since the 60’s for the blacks or the 70’s for the
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