“Congratulations” Justice Roberts—you have your very own Dred Scot for your resumé

The current U.S. Supreme Court, perhaps the most reactionary in U.S. history since the pre-Civil War period, has just promulgated its own Dred Scot decision.  Voting, of course, is a constitutional right—but only when and how a state deems fit, or so sayeth Chief Justice John Roberts in his opinion on a 5-4 ideological split. Sections 4 and 5 of the Voting Rights Act—which established the requirement that states with prior voter-suppression histories obtain prior approval by the Justice Department when making changes to its voting procedures—were declare “unconstitutional” despite the fact that the Act explicitly falls under the purview of the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution. 

“Our country has changed. While any racial discrimination in voting is too much, Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes to remedy that problem speaks to current conditions.” What planet is Roberts and the rest of the right-wing majority on the Court—including confirmed racial bigots like Scalia, Alito and Thomas (Mr. “White”)—inhabiting? The irony of it all is that there are banner headlines in regard the Court's follow-up decision, overturning the Defense of Marriage Act, which essentially gives same-sex couples federal recognition; but there has been barely an acknowledgment by the white-controlled media that this same court has been whittling away at racial minority rights for years.

Let’s drift back into reality. Six states of the old Confederacy (not including border state Kentucky) have two Republican U.S. Senators; in fact there are more Republican senators from the former Union states than there are Democrats in a region formerly almost exclusively represented by that party. According to the 2010 Census, the state of Mississippi is 58 percent white and 37 percent black. Yet since 1989 it has not elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate, and the state’s oddly-shaped congressional districts insure that the majority of the state’s black population is crowded into one district, providing the state’s only Democrat in its congressional delegation. 

What is disturbing about this is that theoretically if only 20 percent of the state’s white population voted Democrat, the make-up of its congressional delegation would likely be the opposite of what it is. Much the same can be said about other states and municipalities that were under the purview of the Voting Rights Act. Yet blacks and other minorities—despite constituting a sizable proportion of the population—have little or no influence in policymaking in these states dominated by the racial attitudes of the white majority which is still largely stuck in an antebellum mentality. 

In states like Alabama and Texas, efforts to further suppress the vote of presumably Democratic-leaning constituencies—whether by voter ID laws, having fewer polling places with shortened polling hours in certain districts, restricting early voting (especially for those with transportation or work hour issues), defective voting machines, or machines that use software manufactured by Republican activists with memory drives that can be “manipulated” or “replaced”—are, as Justice Ginsberg pointed out in her dissent—no different in spirit than the voter suppression of an earlier time. In fact, they are more sinister in character, because they cynically use the cover of “law,” which uses the pretense of “ignorance” to disguise their actual intent.   

Critics of the Voting Rights Act point to the election of Barack Obama as president as “proof” that the Act is no longer needed. On the contrary, it is proof that the Act not only works but is still needed. Obama was elected no help from states which are governed by Section 4 of the Act, and voter suppression laws passed not only in the South but by Republican-controlled state governments in the North were promulgated in response to this “unfortunate” event. Why do you think that Karl Rove was in a state of hysteria and denial when Ohio voted for Obama in 2012? Because he was certain that the same “covert” tactics employed in 2004 would “swing” the vote to his preferred candidate.  These tactics were spelled out in a subsequent Congressional report—released with the acquiescence of the Republicans only on the grounds that nothing would be done to curb such illegalities. 

Justice Roberts claims that our country has “changed.” Says who? Certainly no white person in red-Right states. They can’t understand why anyone would vote for a black man as president of “their” country. The immigration issue has also exposed the fact that nothing has really changed about our society. People may walk the same streets, work in the same places, eat in the same fast food restaurants; but when it comes right down to the nitty-gritty of the matter, our society remains as segregated in time and space and mind as ever.