(I had to go get another cup of coffee for this conversation, and it may get philosophical depending on how many cups I go through this am.)
I tend to say no, if we are going to stay a constitutional republic then whole idea is to have elected officials govern within the confines of a constitution. And no where in those confines is the idea that to represent a district one has to demographically match the constituents by race, or by age, or by sex, or by income level, etc. If it were otherwise we would already see stronger elements of racial segregation today and the make up of Congress would more match the racial demographic make up of the US. Right now we have roughly 12.6% of the nation that is black, roughly 8.9% of the 114th Congress is black. They still do not add up, but still I am unsure that means that Congress cannot be reflective of the will of the people because of that roughly 3.7 point gap for the black population. I am sure though that we have plenty of black voters that feel otherwise and it gives us this problem of what to, Constitutionally, to ensure outcome.
A couple of things. First of all, as I am sure you are aware, there are various ways of interpreting the constitution. Some prefer a literal interpretation, some original intent, and some see the constitution as a very flexible living document that is there to support the needs of the present. It appears you lean towards a literal interpretation. While it is true that the constitution does not explicitly call for congressional district lines to be drawn in this way, it does not explicitly forbid it either. Neither is there anything in it, at least that I am aware of, that would lead one to believe that such district lines would violate the basic principles upon which the document is based. That's one point.
Second of all, although I understand your point about if there was such language, we would have more segregation than we have today, I don't necessarily believe that is the case. I say that based on experience. For example, I am black, but I live in the suburbs of a large metropolitan area, and I did not choose my house, based on congressional district lines. And although I have not researched the matter, I think there is a substantial amount of the population who are like me. So my point is, I don't think it is necessarily clear that having such language in the constitution would result in more segregation. Perhaps it is possible, but even if that were the case, I can't say for sure that the effect would be substantial.
These are the reasons I initially answered the thread with there is no such thing as justified racial discrimination, even if the tables were flipped and 15% of Congress was black with the same 12.6% of the population being black I doubt that alone means a higher degree of political goals obtained. I mean think about it, we have now had a two term black president and by demographics and economic data blacks are worse off now than before, and in just about all categories blacks lag behind whites when it comes to unemployment, labor participation, movement up the income quintiles, education, etc. When it comes to the percentage of Americans on one or more forms of government assistance (social safety nets) the results are just as bad when broken down by racial lines.
I agree with you here. Part of the reason that blacks have not been able exert sufficient influence on policy is systemic, in that there are very powerful lobbies that punch well above their weight in terms of numbers because they are very well funded. Some of them are hostile to the type of policies that would likely benefit blacks. Another reason is the lack of strong, principled leadership. And sadly, it is also due to the influence of poor education and misplaced values.
In this case I have little choice but to suggest the argument for justified racial discrimination by default means continuing to go with very specific representative district lines and eventually involve segregation to effect representative outcome. That further illustrates the political window dressing today's representatives have given us with this effort to ensure political outcome. So now we get to evolve past today's politics being all about treasury promises, we get to include manufactured results for office but little results for those that elected them.
Well some don't like it when it is put forward, but we do quite a bit for the show of it. One way in which people can be effectively controlled is to give them the appearance that they are empowered, when in reality, they have little or no power at all. That's a game that has been played many times, in many ways throughout history.