Banning Redistricting Based on Race
Has the Supreme Court Placed Identity Politics in the Crosshairs?
For almost sixty years, prevailing interpretations of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were designed to do two things: (1) emphasize the racial makeup of constituents in a district and (2) ensure racial parity in election results. Originally, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was designed to eliminate intentional discrimination.
But the law was later amended five times in an effort to broaden its impact in outlawing any practice that “results in a denial or abridgment of the right of any citizen … to vote on account of race or color. " Properly understood, the law, as amended, was designed to ensure that intent to discriminate was no longer necessary to find a violation.
But the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Louisiana v. Callais changes everything we thought we knew about voting rights law. Coupled with the Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. Harvard College in 2023, the Callais decision will likely dramatically alter Americans’ conversations about race and identity.
Many states reacted immediately to the Court’s decision. Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee instantly commenced redistricting efforts. Tennessee completed its process in near record time.
The Voting Rights Act had two primary effects. First, it held states hostage to the federal courts. Second, the law held courts captive to race, even though the law was ostensibly designed to eliminate racial discrimination and racial division.
Any statutory or judicial emphasis on race leads inexorably to the elevation of race as a consideration. This emphasis creates a road to both power and fragmentation. And virtually all Western countries, from the United States to Western Europe, are transfixed by racial and other forms of identity in concert with the political power that courts and elites have conferred on various groups.
Consistent with the possibility that identity claims provoke fragmentation, the head of the Scottish National Party recently announced that he would not consider forming a government with the Reform Party in Britain because it was—in his words—a racist party even though Reform (A) gained the most seats in Britain’s recent local elections and (B) represents the will of middle-income and working-class voters who come from virtually all the racial categories in the nation.
Quite consistently with the elitist views of the head of the Scottish National Party, American commentators on the left were incensed by the Callais decision. Mother Jones Magazine reacted by stating: “The Roberts Court Takes a Page from Plessy v. Ferguson,” one of the Court’s most notorious decisions.
Not content with accusing the Supreme Court of returning to the dark days of “separate but equal,” Mother Jones’ reporter Pema Levy stated that the Supreme Court delivered a death blow to the 1965 Voting Rights Act. It thus endangered the project of multiracial democracy that flowed from the Second Reconstruction of the 1960s. Historians might note that there never was a Second Reconstruction in the 1960s.
Consistent with the tenor and tone of Mother Jones, the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund (LDF) railed against the Court's decision, arguing that it threatens to further divide our nation and entrench power in the hands of the few. The LDF asserts that the Court has placed the diversity of our elected bodies and the representation of all communities at risk.
Despite claiming that America faces a real racial Armageddon, neither Mother Jones, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, nor other elites noted that the most likely outcome of the Callais decision in the state of Tennessee is the election of a black Republican to replace a white Democrat.
Consistent with this paradoxical possibility in Tennessee, thoughtful readers might note that elite Democrats in the 1890s demanded absolute fidelity to white supremacy in a series of actions preventing black Americans from participating as equal members of society. Featuring paternalism, voter suppression, and mayhem on a remarkable scale, this effort left untold numbers of black Americans dead in the port city of Wilmington, North Carolina, and elsewhere.
Neither Democrats nor Republicans are capable of becoming God’s chosen party. History demonstrates that both political parties are capable of indefensible conduct. Still, contemporary elites' approaches to questions of race evoke Democrat-led measures in the South in the latter part of the 19th century. The behavior of Democrats in the 19th century and the misbehavior of contemporary elites today demonstrate both groups’ triumphant ability to capitalize on and instrumentalize race and then ride the crest of this wave—which they helped foment—to power.
Against this backdrop, readers need to work to ensure that identity politics and the capacity of politicians and elites to capitalize on human forms of identity are demolished. Neither politics nor identity is sufficient to identify us as humans who are in desperate need of God’s grace and mercy.