Alabama, 25% African American sends one of its seven Members of Congress to Washington. The objectors - stymied by the Supreme Court before th e midterm - came back to the Court and won a narrow victory.
But it;'s too much for George F. Will, whose views on baseball are admirable, but on race Not.
Our Supreme Court turns to history when it suits them (see Dobbs v. Jackson and Bruen v. New York Rifle & Gun Ass'n). But an honest look at the shamelessly white supremacist Alabama Constitution of 1901 would show you that a former Confederate soldier was qualified to vote, no questions asked. But an ordinary AfricanAmerican would have to answer a quiz about constitutional principles. That history - barely overcome via the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and since nearly gutted by John Roberts in the Shelby County case, has lived to fight another day according to the new majority made possible by the votes of the Chief Justice and Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh in Allen v. Milligan decided this week. But awareness of this legacy is too much for George Will who insists that we must now be `color-blind'. - GWC June 10, 2023
Opinion | On redistricting, the Supreme Court again repudiates colorblind law - The Washington PostBy George F. Will
In a 2006 case about racial calculations in redistricting, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote, “It is a sordid business, this divvying us up by race.” Now he has written the opinion for a divided 5-4 Supreme Court holding that Alabama’s redistricting after the 2020 Census did not do enough divvying.
Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, as amended in 1982, proscribes any voting arrangement that “results in a denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen … to vote on account of race.” Courts, prodded by groups intent on maximizing race-conscious policies and minimizing colorblindness as a social aspiration, have radically rewritten this. They have changed the right to vote into an entitlement to arrangements that make likely particular election results.
This week, the Supreme Court preserved this perversion of the law. It affirmed that the VRA protects Black voters against the “dilution” of their power to achieve their preferred (presumably racial) election outcomes. The court said Black Alabamians are entitled to a second district configured to increase the probability of success by Black candidates.
Alabama, whose population is 26.8 percent Black, has since 1973 had seven congressional districts, and no significant change in the Black portion of the state’s population. In 2021, the legislature approved a map with six White-majority districts and one Black-majority district. The map is similar to those approved by federal courts and the Justice Department after the 2000 and 2010 censuses.
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