The last thing New Yorkers need is another round of political race baiting. But that’s what Rep. Major Owens, a Democrat of Brooklyn, resorted to last week in the Daily News, in which he called the lone white candidate in the crowded primary to replace him a “colonizer.” Mr. Owens, who was elected in 1982, is retiring at the end of 2006 from his role representing New York’s 11th District. The open seat has attracted the interest of the congressman’s son, Chris, who is a far-left anti-war activist. Also interested are a state senator, Carl Andrews, and a state assemblyman, Noah Nicholas Perry.

The one white candidate who has thrown his hat into the ring is David Yassky, a city councilman from Brooklyn. It’s Mr. Yassky who was described by the congressman as a colonizer. Mr. Owens’s remark echoes the logic of the law under which the district was created, the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The 11th District was gerrymandered into existence by court order in 1967 specifically to create a district composed mostly of racial minorities. The assumption was that such a district would elect minority representatives to Congress.

In the 1965 act, Congress aimed to avoid a situation in which minorities would “have less opportunity than other members of the electorate to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice.” In the law, Congress makes clear it wasn’t setting a quota for the number of minority officials elected. But, quota or not, it turned out to provide a foothold for Justice Department officials and judges to recommend, or even order, redistricting where they concluded the old lines aren’t providing sufficient opportunities for minorities to be elected. That’s how the 11th District came to look the way it does.

The 1965 act is in the back of everyone’s mind when redistricting rolls around each decade, according to John Fortier, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Especially so in New York, where Bronx, Kings, and New York counties are covered by a separate “no retrogression rule” that requires them to gain federal approval for any changes in voting procedures to ensure the changes are not discriminatory, since in the 1960s, they were found to have a history of electoral discrimination.

This is the context in which Mr. Owens is calling the one white candidate in the primary a colonizer. He is speaking of a former aide to Senator Schumer whose record on the council has been noteworthy mainly for his support for a resolution against the effort to liberate Iraq and his efforts to require developers to include “affordable” housing. We wonder whether Mr. Schumer – or another liberal warhorse – will defend his former aide. And remark on the irony that such a politician is the one a departing congressman is suggesting shouldn’t be in a race in Brooklyn because of the color of his skin.