It's no secret that the vast majority of the minority population in heavily urbanized states like New York, Illinois, and Michigan is concentrated in those states' respective dominant metro area. New York City has six minority representatives, Chicago has four, and Detroit has two. However, there is actually a significant minority population in these states outside of the big metro areas. There are three problems for these minorities, though. One, they are so dispersed that it's impossible to draw a compact district that unites them all. Two, the numbers aren't quite there for them to dominate their own congressional district. And three, these minorities are split among several different group, ensuring that no one group can dominate a theoretical district anyway.
For the conundrum of "downstate" or "upstate" minority representation, read on.
First, let's look at the case of Michigan. Michigan's black population in Detroit gets representation in Congress by two people, John Conyers and Hansen Clarke. But what about black Michiganders who don't live in Detroit? Turns out even if they somehow managed to unite with the Asians and Hispanics living outside Metro Detroit, they'd be screwed. Here's my attempt at drawing a minority-majority Michigan district that doesn't go into Wayne, Oakland, or Macomb counties. For some reason all of my images got cut off, but it's 51.3% white total and 56.3% white among the 18+ population.
Ew, gross! I'm pretty sure Michigan has laws against this kind of county splitting (not that it would ever happen anyway). I used water contiguity with Lake Michigan and still couldn't quite make it. However, it's possible with some precinct swapping that one could make a minority-majority district by total population.
Now check out Illinois.
Once again, we're looking at a failure, but this time it doesn't even come close: 56.1% white total, 61.6% white 18+. (Nevertheless, it's an efficient vote sink: 66.4% Obama, 32.2% McCain.) Also note the liberal use of water contiguity, which connects Moline with the St. Louis suburbs using the Mississippi river, and even grabs a few random chunks along the way to remain contiguous (due to a huge earthquake about 200 years ago which altered the path of the river, part of Illinois is west of the river). Even with Rockford, Moline, Kankakee, Springfield, Peoria, Danville, Champaign-Urbana, the St. Louis suburbs, and Cairo in one district, it's impossible to get it minority-majority without entering the Chicagoland counties of Kane or Will.
However, now let's look at New York.
As with Illinois and Michigan, we have a very liberal use of water contiguity, as the district travels up the Niagara River and then along Lake Ontario. (Check out that third screenshot of the area west of Syracuse--all of my districts are contiguous, but with connections like that, I wouldn't blame you if you weren't sure!) Here we've got a district which begins in Buffalo, climbs onto shore at Rochester, and then makes its way through Syracuse and Utica to Schenectady, finally ending up in Albany and Troy.
The biggest difference with this one is...it's actually minority-majority! It's 41.0% white 37.2% black total, and 47.1% white 34.4% black among the 18+ crowd. The amazing thing is, given the more conservative voting patterns of upstate New York, there's actually a decent chance black voters could dominate the Democratic primary, especially in a presidential year. And if a black person won the nomination, they'd definitely be a heavy favorite--no doubt this district would be heavily Democratic. It's fortunate for us Democrats that this district is too ugly to be drawn, because Republicans would probably be able to convince black leaders that this district gives representation to blacks living in upstate cities, when of course all they really want is a Democratic vote sink.
That's it! Thanks for reading, folks. As a way to show my appreciation, here's a bonus minority-majority Minnesota map.
48.9% white total, 57.0% among 18+.
73.0 Obama 24.9% McCain, 72.2% avg Dem 27.8% avg Republican.