EDITOR’S NOTE THE WORLD ACCORDING TO JERRY BUCHMEYER

Just seven months ago, in forecasting how U.S. District Judge Jerry Buch-meyer might rule on the pending lawsuit over minority participation in city government, I wrote in these pages that the judge would be “harshly critical of the city.” Boy, was I wrong.

Harsh is to Buchmeyer’s ruling as attractive is to a brilliant sunset on a late autumn day: a stupendous understatement.

Having made my way through the 248-page document, I can say with feeling that Buchmeyer’s history of racial politics in this city is not only harsh, it is downright ballistic. It takes almost 150 years of “the Dallas way” and blows it to smithereens.

The world according to Buchmeyer is a world in which whites intentionally denied minorities the right to participate in government. But we already knew that. What may not be widely known (and may be disputed by some) is the systematic ugliness of that exclusion. More than the judge’s analysis of the fundamental unfairness of both the 8-3 and the 10-4-1 plans (not to mention all previous election methods), what haunts me is Buchmeyer’s rendering of the emotional stuff: the bitterness of the campaigns over the years, the hollow attempts to protect the status quo, the duplicitous back-room maneuvers to find and float “acceptable” minority candidates. Some of what the judge calls “overt racial appeals” were subtle: for instance, references to whites as “civic leaders” and African-Americans as “black activists” in campaign literature or in the press. Most disheartening was the judge’s citing of current District Attorney John Vance’s race against African-American lawyer Royce West, as recently as 1986, in which Vance ran a newspaper ad contrasting his picture with that of his black opponent. Who can deny that, for some voters, that is all it would take to clinch a vote?

But the past is past. If Dallas is coming of age in terms of sharing power with minorities, how we behave over the next few months will set the tone for the next decade. And that is where a sticky situation gets even stickier.

By the time you read this, the council may have already launched an appeal of the judge’s ruling-not because it rejects Buchmeyer’s version of past events (though some may)-but for other reasons, some principled, some strictly pragmatic. A number of council members believe that it is beyond the reasonable role of the federal judiciary to overturn results of a democratic process. In other words, they think the city-wide vote on the 10-4-1 plan, favored by two-thirds of the voters, albeit in a racially lopsided way, should stick. Making that point got council member Glenn Box threatened with a recall election.

Others back an appeal as a delaying tactic to avoid an interim election. They believe that an election would be an annoying expense of time, money, and effort (and worse-in the case of Harriet Miers and Jerry Bartos, who landed in the same district, one would have to move). And they do not want an election based on 1980 census data when 1990 census data will be available in a matter of months.

But one argument in the other direction may be getting overlooked, one championed persuasively by council member Lori Palmer. If we don’t have an interim election, the council sitting right now-a council elected by a method that has been declared unconstitutional-will pick the people who will develop the permanent plan. Because even after all this hoohahing around 12-1, 14-1, 15-0, et al., the real foundation for power in this city in the Nineties will not be developed until those new census figures come out. If you think you hear squawking now, just wait until a City Council with nine Anglo members, two African-Americans, and no Hispanics attempts to draw the new new lines.

The Chinese have a proverb: may you live in interesting times. We definitely do. May our response to the challenges ahead be a source of pride, not shame.