Weaponized Colorblindness Killed The Voting Rights Act
The Supreme Court's conservative justices seem to be asking why we don't have a White History Month
There's something extraordinarily childish about the reasoning behind the Supreme Court's decision this week to tear the guts out of the Voting Rights Act, one of western democracy's great accomplishments.
John Roberts, continuing the work of his former boss, William Rehnquist, led the Court's radicalized majority in ruling against a Louisiana congressional map that would likely give Black folks more representation. Like Rehnquist – who personally administered racist literacy tests to Black voters in the 1960s – Roberts would not let this stand. He joined the rest of the Court's right-wing majority in saying the following: It is racist to create a congressional district based on race.
I appreciate the folks supporting BFT. Consider subscribing for $3 or $5 a month, or leaving a tip!
The implication, as far as one humble blogger can understand it, is that a district designed to give Black Americans a real chance to elect someone who will represent their interests is inherently racist against white people in that district, and maybe white Americans in general.
Denny Carter
Roberts and Thomas and Alito and the rest are saying: You claim to oppose racism yet you support an electoral map that offers a benefit for American voters based on the color of their skin. This is, I think, the tried-and-true "why don't we have White History Month" legal test that has animated so much of what the Supreme Court's right-wing majority has done in repealing 20th century measures to make life in the United States a little more free and fair for historically marginalized folks.
I wrote about this (shockingly bad-faith) legal philosophy last year in a piece about the rotten foundational aspects of the American right's all-out assault on diversity efforts, which must be deemed discriminatory before they are open to attack (this unreality has not fared well in federal courts).
Roberts learned in those early years, people should not be treated differently because of the color of their skin. It made adherents to this bullshit concept sound beneficent, downright egalitarian: No law should favor one race over another. This was the perfect bad-faith lens through which to destroy landmark Civil Rights legislation.
It's not all that surprising that Roberts was steeped in the "why don't we have White History Month" legal muck as a SCOTUS intern in the 1980s, as Reagan administration officials dismissed civil rights legislation as a "kind of racial spoils system in America."
John Lewis, for one, had Roberts nailed from the start. During Roberts' confirmation hearings, Lewis saw through his carefully-crafted mask of judicial neutrality and spotted a man who would joyfully destroy everything Lewis and his Civil Rights partners had achieved.
I feel that if Judge Roberts is confirmed to be the Chief Justice of the United States, the Supreme Court would no longer hear the people's cries for justice. I feel that the leadership of the Court will promote politics over the protection of individual rights and liberties. If the Federal Courts had abandoned us in the civil rights movement in the name of judicial restraint, we might still be struggling with the burden of legal segregation in America today. Jurist Roberts's memos reveal him to be hostile towards civil rights, affirmative action and the Voting Rights Act. He has even said that Voting Rights Act violations, and I quote, "should not be made too easy to prove.'
It was always the right's goal to weaponize colorblindness against the gains of marginalized Americans. It just took a while to get enough true believers – bad-faith operators – into positions where they could load that legal weapon and fire it indiscriminately against Americans of color, who have benefited greatly from tremendous pro-democracy efforts like the Voting Rights Act.
Severely overeducated men like Roberts and Kavanaugh and Thomas and the other far-right SCOTUS justices know that the Louisiana district in question was not actually racist against white Louisianans. They know the history of the US and they understand why the country needed constitutional changes in the 20th century if it was going to survive as a multiracial democracy and not be subsumed by generations of racial warfare and the kind of social instability that is not good for rich folks' stock portfolio.
But these SCOUTS justices needed to pretend to be ignorant of this history if they were going to lean all the way into the thinking that produces the question: Why is there no White History Month?
Denny Carter
It's a question I recall white kids asking in grade school. I had no great answer for them because I had only been taught the broad brushstrokes of American history. I knew Black folks had had it bad for a long time. I had not yet seen the pictures of Klansmen and burning crosses and mutilated Black men hanging from trees while white families happily picnicked nearby. I had not learned about the American government jailing and murdering Black political leaders and their colleagues and families. I did not know about the economic violence of red lining. I had not seen Emmitt Till in his open casket, and I had not read about his family members crying out to God for mercy, for deliverance.
Once I learned about these things – once I understood what came before me – I could better answer why the US does not have a White History Month. It wasn't so hard to understand if one wanted to understand it.
Kids kept asking the question well into high school, and I suspect the zoomers who have never read a book and have AI think for them and have no interest in historymaxxing continue to ask about a White History Month in America. I imagine a sniveling shit like Nick Fuentes has wondered very powerfully why we don't have a month dedicated to the accomplishments of white Americans. These people are stupid and they should feel bad for being stupid. We need more shame. Import it, dig it out of the ground, do whatever it takes. People need to be made to feel ashamed of themselves for being hateful and ignorant.
On today's Bad Faith Times podcast (see below) – available to BFT supporters – I talked about the death of the VRA, what might come next, and ask you to buy my new book.
