Supreme Court Voting Rights Act ruling is progress, not racism, pastor says

The Supreme Court’s recent Voting Rights Act decision did not eliminate a single Black citizen’s right to vote. What he did was begin to undo the system that allowed politicians and activists to divide Black voters into strange racial districts and call it fairness.

For years I’ve watched congressional maps become increasingly ridiculous. They snaked along highways, leapt over rivers and passed through paper-thin corridors to reach another cluster of Black voters. These politicians were not drawing neighborhoods linked by proximity, common problems, or common interests; They were drawing by race. They were taking a Black neighborhood here and figuring out how to connect it to another Black neighborhood, miles away, that had a narrow strip of land, so they could get to the right percentage.

This has always bothered me. The same people who claimed to speak for equality were more than willing to tear Black citizens apart on the map. They did not see families, churches, schools or local communities. They saw census blocks and skin color. They called it representation. I always saw something more twisted in him. He said black people cannot stand alone politically. To matter, he said, we must be specially arranged, specially packaged, and specially protected by a racial bureaucracy.

Now the Supreme Court has said no to most of these. In Louisiana v. Callais, the court sharply changed the way Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act was used in redistricting and limited the race-based logic that shaped many of these maps. It did not repeal the Voting Rights Act. He did not take away anyone’s right to vote. We were not told that black Americans couldn’t vote, run for office, organize, or win. The government cannot continue to make race the primary principle in determining districts and claim that this is the highest form of civil rights.

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You’d never know it from the reaction on the left. Within days, the usual commentators were acting like it was 1955 in the Deep South. They said the Voting Rights Act was gutted and destroyed. It was as if we were suddenly back to literacy tests, poll taxes, and clubs trying to get people registered.

What’s worse is that some of the usual race charlatans have taken this as an opportunity. They are a class of racial performance artists who know exactly what they are doing. They take any decision they don’t like and immediately dress it up in the language of White supremacy, discrimination, and historical terrorism. Some use the term “White supremacy” so casually that the words themselves begin to lose all meaning. This is not a serious thought.

They use old ghosts of racism to create their own brand. They act opportunistically out of fear. This is immoral.

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What angers me most is that these Black opportunists and these White criminal liberals refuse to let us experience this moment for what it is: a step toward more complete equality under the law. For once, the country is moving away from a system that says Black political power should depend on specific racial distinctions made by the government. Instead of accepting this as progress, they have to spit everywhere. They must stir up the long-dead specter of systemic racism and convince people that America is still hopelessly racist and that Black citizens cannot possibly be subject to the same rules as everyone else.

This is disgusting.

But these charlatans do not protect us. They maintain their own importance. If black people begin to see this as a movement toward a single standard of citizenship, where our votes matter because we are citizens and not because we are crammed into a specially shaped district, then the entire grievance industry begins to lose its influence. So they panic. “White supremacy,” they shout. They shout “Jim Crow”. They tell us democracy is dead. What they are actually fighting for is to eliminate their diminishing interest.

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The word “Black” had real weight in this country. It meant pride. This meant a people who had endured humiliation and still stood tall. It meant perseverance, self-respect, faith and overcoming. This meant that parents taught their children to work hard, keep their faith, and never give up their dignity. But many of today’s loudest voices speaking on behalf of Black America are little more than hustlers. They joke around for the cameras, call America irredeemably racist, and do it all in a country that gives them the freedom to sell that lie.

The facade of the Supreme Court. (Image alliance via Valerie Plesch/Getty Images)

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This is the tragedy. Instead of “Go out and win over your neighbors,” they say, “You can’t survive unless someone packages you into your race.” Instead of seeing us as builders, they continue to portray us as victims.

As a pastor, I reject this story. Our honor comes from God. Our political power comes from organizing, persuading, demonstrating, and building coalitions with people who share our streets and our values, not just the color of our skin. I want black people to believe in that kind of power. It is not the power of complaint merchants. Not the power of race hustlers. Real power.

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We need to believe in our own will, trust in our own voice, and have the courage to stand under the same law as everyone else.

We are Americans. This is not racism. This is progress.

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