Grappling with the Gray
Are you ethical? Join Rabbi Yonason Goldson and his panel of thinkers as they grapple with a new ethical challenge each week. Only by contemplating all sides and every angle can we improve ethical decision-making, build more trusting relationships, and help create a more ethical world.
Grappling with the Gray
Grappling with the Gray #129: The ethics of gerrymandering?
Does bad behavior ever justify bad behavior?
That's the question that drives the conversation when Natalie Renee Parker and N. Wyman Winbush II, Captain USNR-Retired, MBA join the ethics panel to Grapple with the Gray.
Here is our topic:
Congressional gerrymandering has been going on in America for over a century. Originally, it was used to marginalize black voters by lumping them into homogenous districts, thereby diluting their political influence state- and country-wide. Lately, it’s become a weapon of Republicans against Democrats, and Democrats against Republicans.
After Texas Republicans began implementing their plan to gain five seats in congress by redrawing district lines, California Governor Gavin Newsom declared he would respond by doing the same thing in his state. Which raises the age-old question: do two wrongs make a right?
In fact, Texas could make (and has made) exactly the same claim. Massachusetts has had 5 Republican governors out of the last seven, yet the state doesn’t have one single Republican representative. 40 percent of New Englanders historically vote Republican, yet they have virtually no representation in the House.
Arguing “they started it” is hardly a strategy to affect meaningful change. The 2019 Supreme Court decision not to interfere in state redistricting may have been the right choice with respect to legal principle, but it left the door open to the kind of political range war we’re witnessing now.
With the existence of various software systems to guide honest map-drawing, it’s a matter of will rather than way. If leaders continue playing one identity group against the other to protect their own power, how is democracy supposed to function? And what can We the People do about it?
Meet the panel:
Natalie Renee Parker is a senior Executive Leadership Coach and consultant, Helping companies increase their impact by creating healthy cultures and unleashing the power of people.
Wyman Winbush, aka the Wisdom Broker, is a retired US Navy captain, a Professional Speaker-Trainer, and Multi-Disciplined Problem Solver, helping leaders become better leaders and high-performance-minded individuals to exceed their expectations.