TWELVE YEARS ago, when Darrell Jackson was running for the state Senate for the first time, he was invited to speak to a bridge club in the Calhoun County part of his district. The club met at the home of an elderly white lady. Before he left, she told him, You'll be the first black person I've ever voted for.

He appreciated that, but even more, he appreciated the side effects of
campaigning for white votes. Having to ask that lady and her friends for
their votes certainly made me more sensitive to different kinds of people,
he said last week. I discovered that people are more alike than they are
different. To find that out, All you have to do is sit down and talk to
them.

This may not sound like any great revelation. But the sad truth is, its
something that few politicians today, black or white, are likely to learn
about on the basis of political experience. That's because of the way
lawmakers draw electoral districts these days, using increasingly
sophisticated computer programs to cram black voters into a few districts, and leaving all other districts looking like Michael Jackson oddly shaped, and unnaturally white.

Of course, the idea behind these bizarre-looking single-member districts is or rather, was  to make it more likely that people like Darrell Jackson
would have a chance to be elected, given voters unfortunate tendency to
vote for folks who look like them. In fact, the late Sen. Isadore Lourie
ended his illustrious career by stepping aside to give Mr. Jackson a
chance. He believed it was that important to have more black senators in a state that was one-third black.

Its hard to imagine anyone in the General Assembly making such a gesture today. That's because, thanks to single-member districts, our Legislature is alarmingly polarized along both racial and partisan lines.

Single-member districts have had three main effects: They elected a few
black lawmakers, they brought Republicans into power (because when
districts are almost perfectly white, which most districts are these days,
they trend Republican), and they led to a State House full of people who
see themselves quite accurately as elected only by people like themselves, in terms of both skin color and political party. That makes them unlikely to listen to anyone different, and that leads to the bitterness of today's politics.

When you take all of the black votes out of a district and leave it with no
diversity, Sen. Jackson explains, it changes the way you govern; it changes the way you run.

If you want to see how stark the dichotomy is, just visit the Senate
gallery, and look down. When Republicans took over the Senate in 2001 and organized it for the first time along partisan lines  even making Democrats and Republicans sit on different sides of the aisle, Washington-style the divide became visually inescapable. I look over at the other side, and it is all white men, says Sen. Jackson.

It isn't entirely impossible to bridge that divide. Sen. Jackson cites Sen.
Jim Ritchie of Spartanburg as one of the Republicans with whom he can work, and has worked.

But the prevailing mentality can undermine the best efforts of people of
good will. And Sen. Jackson by no means blames the Republicans for all of that.  Speaking of a bill he helped sponsor, he said, The old guard on my side was ready to kill it because it was Jim Ritchie's bill. It wasn't until
they learned that it was also Darrell Jackson's bill that some of the Democratic war horses stopped snorting and let the bill go by unmolested.  Unfortunately, there are not enough such bipartisan alliances to change the prevailing atmosphere, which remains poisonously partisan.

There are times when I get pretty frustrated, Sen. Jackson said. It is as
bad as it has ever been.

But partisanship isn't the only thing that frustrates him. The additional
tragedy is that the original problem that led to the creation of these
homogenized districts still exists (and even worse, is unlikely to go away
as long as we keep electing people this way). That was illustrated by a
discussion the senator says he had with U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn not long ago.

While he's got nothing against Inez Tenenbaum, Sen. Jackson was heartbroken that Rep. Clyburn would not even consider seeking the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Fritz Hollings. As Sen. Jackson tells the story, he confronted the congressman about it, asking Why?

Because I cant win.

Well, why cant you win?

Because I'm black.

Exchanges like that keep Sen. Jackson from being able to tell his sons
honestly that there is no glass ceiling preventing them from being whatever they want to be. He related another anecdote, about a schoolboy he met who proudly said he wanted to be president someday.

You cant be elected president, a girl scoffed, causing the boy to hang his
head down. You're black.

Its one thing for a fifth- or sixth-grader to say that, said Sen. Jackson.
Its another for a U.S. congressman ... to say it.

Is it true that Jim Clyburn cant win the Senate seat? Probably. Is it
because he's black? I wish I could say that's not a factor (along with his
politics), but I cant. We've seen some progress in that regard in recent
years  the at-large election of Tameika Isaac (now Devine) to Columbia City Council offers hope. But the fate of Steve Benjamin's campaign for attorney general argues otherwise.

Sen. Jackson sees progress, too. He points to my sitting at this table
representing a district that Marion Gressette once represented. But he owes his seat to single-member districts, the very phenomenon that trains
politicians and voters to think more along partisan and racial lines than
they otherwise would.

How do we get to where Darrell Jackson and other black Americans have a true chance to be elected, without furthering racial and ideological
apartheid?

We have got to find a better way. Does anyone have Lani Guinier's number handy? As I recall, she had some ideas about alternative paths, and got pilloried for them. Maybe its about time we gave her a call.