The Supreme Court voting rights ruling is already weakening Black political power

A nationwide campaign is underway to systematically dismantle Black political influence.

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In Tennessee, Republicans are working to eliminate a congressional district that allows the majority-Black city of Memphis to choose its own representative. 

In Florida, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed off on a new map that eliminates a South Florida district, which had a near-majority Black electorate. 

And in Louisiana, Republicans threw out thousands of votes that had already been cast so they could pass a new map that eliminates a congressional district that includes the majority-Black city of New Orleans.

Following the Supreme Court’s lead, Republican lawmakers have cast these as mere partisan exercises or even an attempt to be “race neutral.” But the pattern is not subtle, and Americans should not pretend otherwise.

At every turn, we are told this is not about race, that it’s just politics, that they’re just respecting the process. 

Please. This is not some theoretical exercise being debated in a classroom. This is a threat to the multiracial democracy that our ancestors built over the last 250 years, often at great cost to them and the country.

I don’t think Americans fully understand the emergency of this moment.

The Voting Rights Act, which the Supreme Court gutted last week, was not some symbolic achievement. People bled and died for that law. Entire generations organized, marched and fought in courtrooms and legislative chambers so Black Americans could fully participate in democracy and wield real electoral power.

Now we are watching that progress get chipped away in real time, while some who should be on the frontlines protesting continue to debate whether it’s actually happening.

Trust me, it’s happening. And what frustrates me most is that America has seen this movie before.

After Reconstruction ended, the 14th and 15th amendments to guarantee basic rights for formerly enslaved people were still in place. Black Americans were still citizens. On paper, Black men still had the right to vote.

But then states stopped enforcing those rights. Courts weakened them. Governors aided and abetted the rollback. Business leaders looked away. And slowly, methodically, rights that existed in theory stopped existing in practice.

That is the part of American history people love to skip over.

The collapse of Reconstruction was not just about Klan terror and white lynch mobs. It was about institutions. It was about statehouses. It was about courts. It was about people in power deciding they’d had enough of multiracial democracy.

And for nearly 88 years, between the end of Reconstruction and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Black Americans fought to claw back the electoral power that had been stripped away.

Eighty-eight years.

That should haunt all of us right now, because too many Americans have convinced themselves that democratic progress is permanent, that the arc of history, once it bends toward justice, cannot swing back.