For Black Virginia, the Redistricting Fight Is About More Than Party Politics
By The Central Call News Desk
When Virginia voters go to the polls on April 21 to weigh in on the state’s proposed redistricting amendment, African Americans across the Commonwealth will be voting on something far larger than congressional map lines. They will be deciding, once again, whether their voices count in the halls of power.
For decades, redistricting has been one of the most direct tools used to dilute Black political power. From the era of racial gerrymandering — when Black communities were packed into single districts to neutralize their vote or cracked across multiple districts to prevent any from reaching a majority — to today’s partisan battles that often target the same communities, this is familiar territory.
Whoever draws the lines controls who gets heard — and Black Virginians know this better than most.
Why This Matters Specifically for Black Virginians
Virginia’s African American community is concentrated primarily in the Richmond metro area, Hampton Roads, and parts of Northern Virginia. Those communities have historically been subject to both packing — being lumped into a single district to limit broader influence — and cracking, when communities are split among multiple districts to dilute Black voting power in each.
Under the new proposed maps, several of these areas would shift to districts with even stronger Democratic advantages, which could mean more reliable representation in Congress for communities that have long seen their issues — criminal justice reform, economic investment, voting rights, healthcare access — marginalized in Republican-leaning districts.
But it is important to approach this with nuance. The proposed map is unambiguously a partisan Democratic gerrymander. While it would likely increase the number of congressional representatives sympathetic to issues Black Virginians care about, it was not drawn with Voting Rights Act protections or community input as its primary driver — it was drawn to win seats for Democrats.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
Virginia has a long and painful history of redistricting being used against Black communities. As recently as 2019, a federal court ordered Virginia to redraw 11 state House districts that had been racially gerrymandered, packing Black voters to reduce their political influence statewide. That ruling led to Democrats flipping the House of Delegates in 2019 for the first time in a generation.
The Bigger Picture: A National Redistricting War
What is happening in Virginia does not exist in isolation. Across the country, the lines between partisan gerrymandering and racial gerrymandering have always been blurry — because Black voters vote Democratic at rates above 85%, targeting one almost always means targeting the other.
Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell (D-Fairfax) put it plainly during floor debate last fall: Virginia cannot “allow a certain partisan tyrannical majority to continue to gerrymander itself into permanent power while we sit around and say our commitment to principle.”
Early voting begins March 6. The referendum is April 21. Your voice is the map.
