POST 1283
It’s April 12, 1861* All Over Again
An on-point look at the steadfast discriminatory pummeling into powerlessness of the 1965 Voting Rights Act by the Roberts court can be found in The Post-Racial Deception of the Roberts Court. It was penned by Cedric Merlin Powell, University of Louisville, Louis D. Brandeis School of Law, and published in the SMU Law Review. It is a ponderous, thick-headed cure for insomnia. Good news: you’ll get Powell’s message from his conclusion:
Post-racial deceptions are disruptive, devastating in impact, and disconcerting because they ostensibly preserve fairness and the Court’s vaunted legitimacy, but instead chill all positive race-conscious remedial efforts and initiatives to advance substantive equality through the diversity imperative. The Roberts Court’s post-racial constitutionalism has undermined anti-discrimination law in virtually every area: school integration, affirmative action, Title VII, housing, and voting rights with the added effect of constitutionalizing its post-racial deception.
Racist is racist and no amount of Supreme Court verbal sleight of hand can mask its deviousness and cruelty. Same for the shameless Congressional Republicans doing shameful, deceitful, discriminatory things.
Bait And Switch
George W. Bush appointed John Roberts to the Court in 2005. During Roberts’ confirmation hearing he told us that he was an originalist, a traditionalist and a steadfast proponent of
Stare Decisis: A legal principle requiring judges to honor previous rulings, providing consistency and predictability in the law.
Roberts described Roe v Wade as “settled law” then. But he trashed it in its first direct test before him. I guess it wasn’t decisis-ed enough for Roberts. Likely, he thought he had integrity wiggle room to pull the plug on the prior ruling, but he didn’t.
Then he trashed the 1965 Voting Rights Act at least twice.
Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U.S. 529 (2013), is a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States regarding the constitutionality of two provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965: Section 5, which requires certain states and local governments to obtain federal preclearance before implementing any changes to their voting laws or practices; and subsection (b) of Section 4, which contains the coverage formula that determines which jurisdictions are subject to preclearance based on their histories of racial discrimination in voting.
When that law was overturned the Court’s decision made the gerrymandering and voter suppression shit hit the fan immediately in a dozen and a half states. Good-bye voting rights for non-Whites.
Last week the Roberts Court, proudly led by Justice Not-So-Stare-Decisis, trashed Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The Awful 6 have allowed the state of Louisiana and all the states that breathe that same polluted, hateful air to racially redistrict their states and cut out representatives of color and thereby neuter non-Whites.
Calling all that racist switcheroo Bait and Switch really is far too generous to Roberts, because it looks like he showed up at the Court waving a stare decises flag while secretly looking for ways to kill Roe, neuter civil rights legislation and give big money people gigantic power over you (see this Sunday’s post for more on that). Some and maybe all of that was at least partly racist. So forget his alter boy looks. He’s a racist and the Court’s racist decisions have impact.
Roberts may not mean to be cruel and discriminatory, but his intentions are irrelevant. What matters is what he does and the cruel and discriminatory effect that has. And he leads a “renegade, partisan Supreme Court.”
Nixon was a raging racist. Reagan was a raging racist with a Hollywood face and an “Oh, golly” manner. Trump is whatever is beyond racist.
Reagan campaigned accusing fictitious “welfare queens” and “young bucks” of grossly scamming we good White folks via welfare programs. Key word: fictitious. Reagan was a president urging us to hatred, much like today.
Be clear that John Roberts’ Awful 6 are a critical part of inciting racism. And recognize that we are just short of the apotheosis initiated by the racist Moral Majority and Heritage Foundation co-founder Paul Weyrich. He realized that Republicans could not win unless they suppressed (that means cheated) other voters. Their Song of Hatred is not only still being sung; it is blaring from loudspeakers all over our country and from the Court Chamber of the Supreme Court.
Given that, recognize how desperately we need a half dozen more Supreme Court justices to counterbalance the racism.
Here’s what Sen. Rafael Warnock told Margaret Brennan on Face The Nation:
[S]tates that used to play old games, they’re playing new games. They’re 21st-century Jim Crow tactics in new clothes: moving voter polls, closing polls in Black and brown communities, purging people — people literally showing up [to vote] and not knowing that their names have been purged from the [voting] rolls. And the data shows that this disproportionately impacts Black and brown citizens.
That’s what the Supreme Court Awful 6 allowed.
From Rick Wilson in The Red Court Kills Voting Rights:
The War on Voting has entered its scorched-earth phase.
We are no longer debating “voter integrity,” “ballot access,” or the other endless sea of euphemisms in the polite, tepid tones of a Sunday morning talk show. We are witnessing a twin-pronged demolition of the democratic franchise so cynical, so surgically precise, and so fundamentally nihilistic that it would make a Cold War politburo blush.
Have a look at the Daily Docket, Mark Elias’ update for May 1:
After Supreme Court’s destruction of Voting Rights Act, here’s the latest on redistricting
.
Elias lists what the various states are doing to immediately undermine representation of and for people of color. John Roberts has given the go-ahead for them to do freebase racial gerrymandering. All of the gains of the 50s and 60s are systematically and relentlessly being wiped out, one Supreme Court decision at a time. Too bad for you, Dr. King, Malcolm X, Andrew Young, Ralph Abernathy, Roy Wilkins and so many others. And Rosa Parks, you get to the back of that bus right now.
The long term struggle for civil rights may not be dead, but it’s gravely injured. Maybe that win over enslavers in 1865 only postponed the full cruelty, because it looks like the haters aren’t just back, but they’re back with a vengeance. They’re in plain sight and trashing our dearest values and our hopes for humanity before our eyes. The Civil War never ended.
From Ted Dintersmith in Better Days???:
Our esteemed SCOTUS is hastening the collapse of our democracy. John Roberts doesn’t seem to give a damn about America’s future.
Echoed by Robert Reich in Sam Alito and My Friend Mickey.
Finally, a quotation from Steve Schmidt’s piece, A New Birth of Freedom, a piece inspired by Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address:
The United States is great because it can be made new again by the people who are sovereign and free. It can be made more just and perfect. It is a place where dreams can be fulfilled and where freedom can flourish, but it will never be a place that is free from the dangers that come from the people who want to take those things away.
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* April 12, 1861 was the day when Confederate forces opened fire on Union-held Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, thus beginning the Civil War. That war succeeded in killing over 700,000 Americans in just 4 years. That’s 479 soldiers killed every day for 4 years. Or five 9/11s every 8 days.
That’s just a sampling of what greed and racial hatred can do.
The time for action is NOW!
Keep standing up,
speaking out
and taking action, like:
- – Register voters
- – Give to the ACLU
- – Train to fight ICE
-
Count-down Timer
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To The November 3, 2026
Mid-Term Election
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