The Voting Rights Act Was Never Colorblind. The Supreme Court Is.
Why ignoring race makes injustice harder to see and easier to sustain
Footnotes recently moved up from #6 in the History category on Substack to #5. Help us get all the way to #1. Become a paid subscriber today.
The Supreme Court’s latest ruling on voting rights rests on a faulty premise — the idea that the best way to address racial inequality is not to consider race at all.
In its ruling, the court shifted the burden of proof for race-based gerrymandering of congressional districts from demonstrating discriminatory effects to proving racist intent.
Its harm may extend not only to minority representation in Congress and state legislatures, but to race relations and to Christian witness.
Voting Rights Requires Focusing on Race
For several decades now, many white Christians have been taught to see “colorblindness” as a virtue — a sign of spiritual maturity that rises above division.
But the 1965 Voting Rights Act was born from a confrontation with the color line. Faced with poll taxes, literacy tests and grandfather clauses, measures to circumvent federal law and disenfranchise Black voters, Black Christians mobilized as a matter of human rights and God-given dignity.
They spoke with moral clarity about the issues of their day, including segregation, lynching, police brutality and the denial of voting rights.
The Black church did not use colorblind language in a society that oppressed them precisely because of their color. In Selma, a voter registration drive turned deadly when police killed activist Jimmie Lee Jackson. In response, leaders organized a meeting at Zion United Methodist Church, where they decided to bring their protest directly to the governor in Montgomery.
When 600 protesters gathered to march from Selma, Alabama, to the state capital of Montgomery, they were violently confronted at the Edmund-Pettus Bridge. Police officers brutally beat civil rights marchers with tear gas and batons in what became known as “Bloody Sunday.”
The images sent cultural shockwaves around the nation, and in the immediate aftermath, President Lyndon B. Johnson sent a bill to Congress. In August 1965, he signed into law the Voting Rights Act.
The act did not emerge from a colorblind agenda. It came from those who spoke clearly about race and power.
This Is Why We Need CRT
But today, many mostly white Christians stand in direct opposition to the legacy of faith-based civil rights activism. They have made an enemy out of race-conscious theories and practices such as Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) and have pejoratively labeled such efforts as “woke.”
Critical Race Theory argues that racial inequality is embedded in laws, systems and institutions. Racist intent is not required to create racial harm. Inequality can result from the ordinary operations of systems built to privilege some and disadvantage others based on race.
This is exactly the kind of analysis that colorblind justices and many colorblind clergy reject.
I wrote this for Religion News Service in response to the Supreme Court’s latest voting rights decision. Read the full piece below.
“Why do you make everything about race?” Says the people who are not impacted by the fact that everything IS about race. It takes intentionally ignoring historical facts to not see the throughline.
Appreciate you weighing in on this as an historian. I'll be sharing this post with many others.
Might take:
It's obvious that MAGA and many other White folks are all about self-service, marginalizing others, and enriching themselves.
Diminishing the Voting Rights Act served no other purpose than being able to redraw districts in which they will weaken the influence of the Black vote and representation in government.
Their plan is not even sophisticated, it is self-serving at best, and evil at worst.