Wyandotte County is nothing like rural Kansas. Don’t redistrict urban needs away
On Aug. 11, 2021, the Health Equity Action Transformation Community Action Board in Kansas City, Kansas, submitted the following letter as testimony to the Kansas Redistricting Committee. Members of our advisory board also spoke in person when the committee made its stop at Kansas City Kansas Community College. Of the folks who spoke at that event, 100% were in favor of keeping Johnson and Wyandotte counties together in the 3rd Congressional District, and against breaking Wyandotte County into separate districts. As the 2022 Kansas legislative session gets underway, there is some evidence that Wyandotte County voices are not going to be taken into account. The silencing of Black and brown voices by members of the Kansas Legislature is unacceptable and should be called out in the strongest terms. At this point, it seems appropriate to take this fight into the media sphere, since the Legislature refuses to act in good faith.
Our testimony:
Wyandotte County is unique to the state of Kansas in many ways. It is the only majority-minority county in the state. It is a largely urban county, situated in one of the largest metropolitan areas in the country. And its history is rich with tales of freedom, hope and resiliency, but also destruction, oppression and neglect.
In the mid-1800s, Kansas City, Kansas, was a safe haven for slaves who had escaped across the river from the slave state of Missouri, aided by the indigenous people who populated the area at the time. The decades that followed saw a robust community emerge, complete with minority-owned businesses, restaurants and grocery stores. But by the mid-1900s, redlining, white flight and other discriminatory policies had destroyed the once-vibrant community, leaving in its wake a neglected and impoverished population.
We wish we were coming to the redistricting committee with a message of hope. We wish we could say the misdeeds of history are now behind us. But the stark reality is that things are getting worse for the most vulnerable people in Wyandotte County. The average life expectancy continues to drop, and low-income Black populations are now living an average of 24 years fewer than middle-income white populations a few miles away. Housing is becoming less and less affordable, and homelessness is visibly on the rise. Parks are neglected, deteriorating and being decommissioned. The only swimming pool in the eastern half of Wyandotte County was shuttered in 2021. Food deserts are vast, stretching for miles, and are concentrated in the same areas where automobile ownership is sparse and job opportunities are few and far between. Lead is estimated to be in 50% of the homes where we are raising our children. Air pollution has been measured at dangerous levels in several parts of town, and environmental racism has placed industrial polluters at the fence lines of our neighborhoods.
Racist government policies of the past destroyed the livelihood of a once-thriving community. Redrawing congressional districts in a way that takes power away from that same community would ensure that our people remain desperate and impoverished. Decision-makers who push for such redistricting maps will be remembered by history for upholding the system of white supremacy, much as we remember George Wallace today. We have an opportunity to honor the same traditions that Wyandotte County was founded on, when it was a stop on the Underground Railroad and a mecca of freedom for those escaping slavery. We have an opportunity to practice equity in a way that the founders of our county would be proud of. Make sure Wyandotte County voters’ voices matter over the coming decade, and help make our community thrive again.
As it stands today, the 3rd District has a population of 779,860, 64,000 higher than the neighboring 2nd District. To make the districts closer in population, the northeast corner of Miami County should be incorporated into the 2nd District. The areas around Bucyrus and Louisburg are 92% white and rural, and have very little in common, culturally or economically, with the rest of the congressional district. If all of Miami County were to be incorporated into the 2nd District, it would leave only the urban and suburban portions of the Kansas City metropolitan area in Distrct 3, creating a more cohesive community of interest, and it would help to create a more equitable system of presentation.
Equity is the core mission of our organization, and it is a principle that reverberates throughout Wyandotte County. Equity is not the same thing as equality. Equity is based on justice, and it means recognizing that we do not all start from the same place and must acknowledge and make adjustments to imbalances. For Wyandotte County, equity means increasing funding for things such as health care, education, food insecurity and housing. It means funding parks, arts and infrastructure projects, and paying the residents of our county a thriving wage to see those projects come to fruition. It means providing whatever funding is necessary to lift our residents out of poverty and to undo the damage that inequitable government policies of the past caused to our community. And it means ensuring the voters of Wyandotte County are given more robust and equitable influence in choosing who will represent them in Congress.