Jim Crow Will Rise Again…unless
Country Parson
The Supreme Court has declared the 1965 Voting Rights Act finished—no longer necessary for states with a history of drawing district lines to exclude Black voters. The conservative majority insists times have changed and systemic racism of this kind no longer exists.
Within hours of the decision, Louisiana’s governor, Jeff Landry, announced the state would immediately redraw district boundaries to create more Republican districts. Coincidentally, it means the only two Black members of Congress from Louisiana, both Democrats, will be gerrymandered out of any reasonable possibility of reelection. To be clear, they represent districts drawn deliberately to give Louisiana’s Black population representation in Congress.
Several other states have announced plans to do the same—again, coincidentally, states whose history of denying Black voters representation led to the 1965 Voting Rights Act in the first place.
Is this important? Black residents make up just over 30 percent of Louisiana’s population, according to the Census Bureau. Add other nonwhite residents, and the number rises to a little over 40 percent. In a nation free of systemic racism, the issue would be irrelevant. The same would be true in a society where no group holds a majority and the population is more or less evenly distributed across the land. Neither describes the country as a whole, nor many states and localities in particular.
The conservative majority on the Supreme Court appears to believe racial discrimination is no longer a serious problem—or at least that is what they say in public.
Perhaps they are right. 1965 was sixty-one years ago. A great deal has changed. A Black man was elected president twice. A woman of color ran a close, though unsuccessful, campaign for the presidency. Nonwhite Americans have been elected to high office at local and state levels across the nation. Perhaps things have changed.
On the other hand, a vocal and powerful rear-guard movement insists White hegemony is a right, and denying those of European descent their historic place of privilege amounts to denying their rights—subjecting them, in their view, to the very kind of systemic discrimination that once worked in their favor. They may still redraw congressional district boundaries engineered to keep them in power, but have things changed enough for such efforts to fail?
I do not know. But I wonder whether enough voters of every color have become disgusted with this kind of manipulation to refuse to go along and instead elect candidates—of any color—who will represent all the people in their districts for the good of the whole and the detriment of none. They would run on agendas often called progressive, though expressed in either conservative or liberal terms. MAGA media would no doubt label them radical left-wingers, but there may be enough voters who know better.
Is that even remotely possible? I think it is—perhaps not likely, but not as remote as it once seemed.
The current majority of the Supreme Court has made clear they are, at least in effect, aligned with a reactionary rear guard. They have made the task more difficult. Yet I am watching to see whether good people in every state will rise to the occasion.
The greater obstacle may not be systemic racism alone, but the power of dark money flowing from the ultra-wealthy, determined to prevent the broader public from having a meaningful role in the nation’s future. There have been moments in our history when the electorate has been sufficiently energized to challenge entrenched power. It has happened before.
I wonder if the coming midterms will show it can happen again.