Did the Supreme Court Strike a Blow for Freedom?

“Conservatives” ruled that race matters.

Thumbnail credit: © Fred Schilling/Collection Of/Planet Pix via ZUMA Press Wire

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Last week the US Supreme Court ruled on yet another case about race. The sheer volume of race cases – and the incredible number of justice-hours spent on them – prove how hard it is build a multi-racial country.

This case was about voting, and goes back to Voting Rights Act of 1965, that keeps kicking up litigation that ends up at the Supreme Court.

The idea of the law was simple: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged . . . on account of race.”

At the time, Congress decided that six Southern states were deliberately suppressing the black vote through such things as poll taxes and literacy tests, and the law banned deliberate voter suppression.

Since then, the court and Congress have tinkered with the law many times, and banned measures that have what some would argue is only the effect of suppressing the minority vote even if there was no such intention. Some people think requiring a picture ID to vote keeps blacks away from the polls, even if the intent is to make sure that only eligible voters vote.

In 1982, Congress left things in a muddle by banning measures that have a discriminatory effect, but it also insisted that minorities don’t have a right to proportionate representation in elected office. That is to say, no quotas in Congress or the state house or school board or anywhere else. A small, unintended discriminatory effect may be OK, but a big one may not be, and this was the kind of case the Court decided last week.

Alabama has seven seats in Congress, but in the most recently drawn up map of electoral districts, only one of the seven – that is the big yellow one, number seven – is majority black.

This means that if blacks vote as a bloc they can get the congressman they want, no matter what white people think. Blacks therefore control 14 percent of the state’s districts even though they are 26 percent of the voting-age population. The argument was they deserve proportionality, which would be two districts with black majorities.

The Supreme Court agreed, in a 5 – 4 decision. It said the law not only permits but requires a certain amount of race-based juggling. However, giving blacks, who are 26 percent of the voting population, control over 28 percent of the Congressional seats sounds like a quota to me. The court admitted the decision had a funny smell, but it waved that aside: “A fair reading of the record do[es] not bear those concerns out here.”

It argued that Alabama could carve out a second majority-black district without too much jiggery pokery, and maybe that’s true. A lefty site called Unsuppress the Vote came up with three maps of voting districts to back up the court’s decision.

The one in the middle is the current map, with the single majority-black district in blue. *** Unsuppress the Vote wants the map on the left, which is more compact, and has two blue, majority-black districts. It also drew the map on the right, which could have been drawn without even one majority-black district.

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a fierce dissent. He says the Voting Rights Act covers “only ‘enactments that regulate citizens’ access to the ballot or the processes for counting a ballot’; they ‘do not include a State’s . . . choice of one districting scheme over another’.”

He quoted approvingly from another decision: “[D]istricting maps that sort voters on the basis of race ‘“are by their very nature odious’,” because “[r]acial gerrymandering, even for remedial purposes, may balkanize us into competing racial factions” and undermine “the goal of a political system in which race no longer matters.”

He says there can be many reasons for drawing boundaries, but race can’t be one of them, whether it’s to hurt or help minorities.

This case is important for two reasons. First, it supports current thinking on affirmative action in college admissions.

It’s now OK to bend the rules – even twist them into pretzels – to get non-whites into top schools – but you can’t have quotas. The reasoning in last week’s ruling is the same.

However, big media are very worried that “The Supreme Court could end affirmative action. What could happen next?”

“The Supreme Court is poised to reverse affirmative action.”

This decision suggests maybe not.

But the other reason this decision is important is that a so-called conservative court, even half a century after the Civil Rights Movement, recognizes that people of different races have different interests and have the right to elect people to push those racial interests. As a practical matter, that means blacks should be able to elect blacks because blacks know best how to get what blacks want.

The decision noted, almost in passing, that “on average, Black voters supported their candidates of choice with 92.3% of the vote” while “white voters supported Black-preferred candidates with [only] 15.4% of the vote.” That is full-tilt bloc voting.

And don’t forget: The Supreme Court’s reasoning applies to local elections, too. As the country gets ever more gloriously diverse, Hispanics and Asians and Hindus and Muslims can start clamoring for safe seats on the city council and eventually in Congress.

Why not quotas for everyone?

Some of you old-timers remember Lani Guinier.

She was one of those black people who fought vicious white supremacy all the way through Harvard and then Yale Law School, taught for 10 years at Penn Law School and then, in 1998, became the first “woman of color” to get tenure at Harvard Law School. In 1994, Bill Clinton wanted her to be Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights. However, it came to light that she had written articles that seemed to be calling for quotas for elected officials. If blacks were 12 percent of the population, they should have 12 percent of congressional seats set aside for them. That upset conservatives, and Mr. Clinton withdrew the nomination.

This did not stop her from being festooned with honors and awards, including 11 honorary degrees.

Most blacks like quotas, even gilded ones like Lani who swanned to the top without them.

It’s whites who don’t like quotas. They pretend that race is a snare and a delusion – maybe even a social construct – and that if we just pretend really, really hard that race doesn’t matter, it won’t. BIPOCs know better, and so do I. I come down on Lani’s side. Let’s set quotas and be done with it.

I’m tired of never-ending racial strife, endless court cases, perpetual foolishness about diversity, and claims that white people wrecked America for everyone else.

However, quotas for minorities in elected office are not the solution. We can’t stop there. They will keep blaming white people and wanting more and more and more from us. Quotas in government are just the beginning. Let’s make everything proportional, until minorities have their own institutions, their own communities, their tax bases, and eventually their own parts of the country.

And we have ours.

I’m just taking progressives at their word. They say it makes a difference what race your congressman is. And the mayor. And the police chief, and your teachers, and who writes the news, who runs the company, who gets the Oscars, who sits on the Supreme Court, who’s in the cabinet and even who’s going to the moon.

Progressives say race makes a difference everywhere, all the time.

If race matters that much, be consistent, fellas. Admit that it matters all the way. All the way to disengagement. Only when BIPOCs really do run the show – for themselves, with their own resources, and on their own responsibility – only then can they say, “Free at last, free at last. Great God almighty free at last.”

And you know what? White people will be free at last, too.