As the composition of the new Congress that convenes in January becomes clear as the last of the contested races for seats in the House of Representatives are settled, the complaints by Hispanic/Latinos that they are underrepresented sound quaint — especially with the election of new gay and lesbian, Asian, Muslim and bisexual candidates.  A new set of fresh HispanicLatino faces will go to Capitol Hill, but they are the products of a system that is not working despite the continuing diversification of Congress itself.

The truth is that HispanicLatinos are vastly underrepresented in Congress.  Up until the 1970’s congressional districts were drawn by state legislatures with no equity in mind.  In one district, 50,000 voters would elect a representative compared to 500,000 in another, making the votes of the 50,000 ten times more valuable.   Once the Supreme Court ruled in the 1960’s that each citizen’s vote was equal to another, it was not long before each person, regardless of voting status, was to be represented equally.  Today, congressional districts are roughly equal in population, currently standing at about 715,000 each.  But equal numbers in population do not translate into equality for HispanicLatinos.

Well-intentioned court decisions meant to undo unfair representation never drove inequality out of the system.  State legislatures cut corners to protect incumbents.  That system of gerrymandering persists today and will be forever the bane of pure democrats who want a pure republican form of government.  So it is that Republican-dominated state legislatures – abetted by an ideologically rigid Supreme Court that does not fully accept the nature and importance of demographic change – have created sets of districts in the states that underrepresent HispanicLatinos.  In the coming Congress to be sworn in, 28 members of the House will be HispanicLatino when more than twice that number would be more apropos given the size of their share of the national population.

The founders never intended, of course, that the apportionment of power ever be defined by religion, economic status or any other special categorization – except for skin color and, later, political parties.  And therein lies the rub.  The system has had to work hard to rid itself of the initial discriminatory intent of the founders toward black Americans that naturally took in the Spanish-speaking population of the time.  It is no accident, then, that HispanicLatinos continue to be underrepresented in Congress – as they have been since the beginning of the Republic.

HispanicLatinos do not expect that they should be represented in the House by a more accurate 70 out of a possible 435 members.  But they should expect more than 28.  Their expectations would be more realistic were mostly Republican state legislatures not motivated to keep the unfair system in place.  As the courts have retreated from efforts to eliminate discriminatory impulses in the system, it has allowed political parties to use the one-person, one-vote theory to their advantage.  And gerrymandering has been augmented by restrictions on the voting rights of HispanicLatinos and by the purging of many from the voter rolls who are legally registered to vote.

The result has been increasing discrimination against HispanicLatinos in the form of gerrymandering against Democrats.  Of course, the opposite is true.  Where Democrats dominate, they have used gerrymandering to punish Republicans – and HispanicLatinos come up short in some states where Democrats hold power.  In those states, entrenched political interests protect non-HispanicLatino incumbents who hold office.

Some of this is accepted as the day-to-day give and take of politics and the rumble of the human condition.  But it is a convenient thing, indeed, for the current Supreme Court to fall back on the excuse that the growth of minority populations makes unnecessary initiatives that seek to advance their interests, whether to gain admission to colleges and universities with low minority enrollments or to compete in the business world from which so many minorities were systematically excluded – or to be free to vote without intimidation or duress.

The nation’s uneven journey to a more-equitable present still masks severe inequality in fundamentally important ways.  No greater evidence is needed than in the six percent of the members of the House of Representatives who are HispanicLatino. They represent a HispanicLatino population that is17 percent of the nation’s total population.  Economic and demographic inequality cannot be remedied ever if HispanicLatinos remain less than half of what they should be politically.

The promise of the nation is that is moves – in fits and starts at times – to mend itself.  From Civil War came triumph for the African American then disappointment with the restoration of the power of the white population in the South.  Then came the push for equality starting with Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John Kennedy that Lyndon Johnson ramrodded through Congress – actions ratified by Supreme Courts they appointed.  HispanicLatinos benefitted by the African American struggle for justice, and so it is no accident that they voted for President Obama’s re-election by more than 70 percent along with more than half of the nation.

But the effort of the majority of the population to push the nation in the right direction has many hills to climb.  Righting the HispanicLatino imbalance in Congress must become a serious political goal so that the political heritage that once so brutally treated minorities and that still resonates in some quarters of the Republic are what become quaint.

Jesse Treviño is the former editorial page editor of The Austin American-Statesman.