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, it’s 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.

It’s 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 can’t win.”

“Well, why can’t 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 can’t be elected president,” a girl scoffed, causing the boy to hang his head down. “You’re black.”

“It’s one thing for a fifth- or sixth-grader to say that,” said Sen. Jackson. “It’s another for a U.S. congressman ... to say it.”

Is it true that Jim Clyburn can’t 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 can’t. 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 it’s about time we gave her a call.

Write to Mr. Warthen at bwarthen@thestate.com.