So, the immolation of the Voting Rights Act by Justice Roberts and his band of merry arsonists continues apace. Yesterday, they heard a case from Louisiana brought by a group of Black voters who sued the state to prevent the elimination of one of two Black-majority congressional districts in the state. Court-watchers commenting on the arguments before the Court seem to agree that, in the words of most stories about the case, the Court is “poised” to gut Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act in much the same way they gutted Section 5 of the act in Shelby County v. Holder, a case in 2013 that allowed states to impose onerous requirements on voting, mainly in the South, that the Voting Rights Act had banished.
Because the case heard yesterday, Louisiana v. Callais, concerned the drawing of federal congressional districts, most of the stories published about the case discussed the drastic way that the gutting of Section 2 would affect the drawing of congressional districts by state legislatures around the country. Political pundits estimated that if the Supreme Court does what it is expected to do, the decision would completely eliminate about 12 districts in the South now controlled by Democrats, handing control of the House of Representatives to Republicans for the foreseeable future.
It’s worse than that. The case will also allow legislatures in Southern states to redraw district maps that elect representatives to the state legislatures, and it will allow county boards of supervisors and town boards to do the same thing, eliminating the ability of Blacks across the Deep South to elect Democrats, who are largely Black in the South, to represent them locally.
Chief Justice John Roberts set the stage for [undercutting] the Voting Rights Act in a 2007 Washington state case concerning school integration, writing that “The way to stop discriminating on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” This was how he created the “colorblind” theory of the way laws are written or the Constitution is interpreted that is so attractive to conservatives. Basically, what the Roberts theory does is say to Black citizens of this country, well, we fucked you over on the basis of your race with slavery and for decades with Jim Crow, and now it’s okay for us to continue to fuck you over on the basis of your race because, well, we’re changing the rules and that’s the way it’s going to be.
As the 1619 Project pointed out, the problem of racial discrimination is a “founding” problem built into the history of this country as if with bricks and mortar. One word explains it: slavery. That’s why the right wing, and even some normal historians went after the 1619 Project with jack boots on. In his second term, Trump jumped on the bandwagon with his assault on teaching history that takes race into account. They’ve even gone after museums for presenting art that depicts race in ways they don’t like, and they have tried to ban the teaching of “Critical race theory” because it basically blames slavery for the problem of racism today.
What Roberts said in the Washington state school segregation case in 2007 and in the Alabama voting rights case in 2011 is this: Okay, we created segregation in schools by separating the races in education, and we created the problem of racial discrimination in voting by barring Blacks from voting entirely in the Deep South, but now we’re putting all that behind us because…we’ve decided that it’s wrong to use race in correcting racial wrongs.
In the case heard yesterday, what the so-called “conservatives” on the Supreme Court are saying is, it’s wrong to create a Black majority congressional district because doing so “takes race into consideration.” The answer to that in layman’s terms is, of course, no duh, genius. White people crapped on Black people for about 400 years “taking race into consideration,” so it’s only fair that we’re going to have to do about 400 years of un-crapping by “taking race into consideration.” How would you like to have ancestors who were slaves, Justice Roberts?
Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist and screenwriter. He has covered stories such as Watergate, the Stonewall riots and wars in Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels and several unsuccessful motion pictures. He has three children, lives in rural Pennsylvania and spends his time Worrying About the State of Our Nation and madly scribbling in a so-far fruitless attempt to Make Things Better.
You can read Lucian Truscott's daily articles at luciantruscott.substack.com. We encourage our readers to get a subscription.
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