I am a Black voter, president of the Amarillo Branch NAACP, and I’m outraged! The Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais to shred what was left of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) will leave millions of Black voters like me without Black leaders in Congress. We could see the largest drop in Black representation since the end of Reconstruction!
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was the brainchild of President John F. Kennedy. After his assassination, President Lyndon B. Johnson used all his powers of persuasion to get it and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed into law These two laws ended the Jim Crow period when Blacks were denied the right to vote through literacy tests and poll taxes, not to mention the harassment and intimidation of individual Black voters. Don’t you remember the Freedom Riders, Selma, lunch counter demonstrations, the water hosing of Blacks and the siccing of dogs on Black demonstrators? I do!
With the Callais ruling, it is now legal to gerrymander for racial reasons, and states across the South — including Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, and others are rushing to redraw maps that dilute Black voting power and remove sitting Black congressmen before the midterm elections. Louisiana even canceled an in-progress election to redraw majority Black districts that will no longer allow Blacks to be elected. They call it “partisan” redistricting. We know what it really is: Black voter disenfranchisement. The message is clear: if they can’t stop Black people from voting outright, they will redraw the maps and change the rules until they have silenced our votes.
In Callais, the Supreme Court weakened one of the last major tools voters had to fight racially discriminatory district maps. This comes after years of attacks on the Voting Rights Act. The Court gutted preclearance in the Shelby County case, making it easier for states like Texas, with long histories of discrimination, to change voting rules without federal approval. In more recent years, the Court ruled that partisan gerrymandering was okay, even though it, too, was initially unconstitutional. Section 2 of the VRA, which was just gutted, was still one of the strongest remaining ways to challenge discriminatory maps after they passed. Now, the Court has essentially gutted that protection too.
The consequences are immediate. Nineteen members of the Congressional Black Caucus are now at risk of losing their seats. The reality is, we may never have Black congress people in the U.S. Congress again!
The Voting Rights Act came from sacrifice and the demand that democracy belongs to the people. The Roberts’ Court is hollowing it out piece by piece. We must vote in the mid-term elections to seat a new Congress which has the power to fight back by restoring the full strength of the Voting Rights Act, and creating clear, enforceable protections for fair maps, equal representation, and the voting power of every community.
Black voters, we must increase our voting participation, protect our votes, and take back the power politicians are trying to steal.
Aphonso Vaughn is president of the Amarillo Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
This article originally appeared on Amarillo Globe-News: Voting Rights Act gutted | OPINION
Reporting by By Aphonso Vaughn, President, Amarillo Branch, NAACP, Special to the Amarillo Globe-News / Amarillo Globe-News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
