Opinion | The Supreme Court’s Jim Crow Logic

Late on Tuesday night, under cover of darkness, the conservative majority on the Supreme Court, or perhaps should I say, the Republican- appointed majority on the Supreme Court, issued a decision — “allowing Alabama to use a congressional map favoring Republicans.” This builds upon the court’s ruling in Louisiana v. Callais. “The justices, in a 6-to-3 vote, are striking down a second majority-Black district in Louisiana.” In this latest decision, the court re-evaluates a case out of Alabama where, back in 2023, a Federal District Court found that state lawmakers had, in fact, engaged in intentional racial discrimination — “saying it denies fair political representation to black voters.” And the court here says, “So what?” and upheld the Alabama maps. “That eliminates one of the state’s two majority-Black districts.” Now, this does ignore the plain historical fact that in the states of the Deep South, voting has always been racially polarized. It was racially polarized 50 years ago. It was racially polarized during Reconstruction. And in fact, the 15th Amendment was written in the context of exactly this kind of racial polarization in voting. All of this is in service of what they call a “colorblind Constitution,” a Constitution which doesn’t see race, which doesn’t touch racial classification. Don’t we all want a colorblind Constitution? Here’s what I have to say about that. The Constitution prior to the Reconstruction amendments was blind. It was blind to racial discrimination. It was blind to racial oppression. It was blind to race hierarchy. It was blind to the overwhelming power of the slave system. The Reconstruction amendments gave the Constitution eyes to see and ears to hear. It gave the Constitution the tools to deal with the legacy of racism, to deal with the legacy of slavery, to actually enforce meaningful and substantive equality in this country. What Sam Alito and Roberts and the conservatives on the Supreme Court have done is not give us a colorblind Constitution that, in the best sense of that word, helps us build a society where race doesn’t shape your life outcomes. What they have done instead is craft a Constitution that shields, protects and reifies existing racial inequalities under the guise of equal protection. What this court is doing is building the same kind of colorblind Constitution that gave us Jim Crow oppression, and so much worse.