The supreme court trusts America not to be racist. I don't Jamil Smith (VRA Ruling)

The Callais decision is predicated on the idea that American leaders will act justly on their own. That premise has already been proven hollow

Sun 3 May 2026 07.00 EDT

Six supreme court justices handed down a ruling built, ostensibly, on the belief that the US has changed so much as to render the protections of the Voting Rights Act unnecessary. No one should be that gullible.

In 1901, the same year my great-grandfather was born, George H White rose to address the 56th United States Congress for the last time. He was a Republican congressman from North Carolina – the only Black member of the entire body. He was leaving because the state he represented had passed legislation making his re-election impossible. Reconstruction had already been undone. The powers that be had narrowed, then deferred, then erased the promise of multiracial democracy, written in the blood of Union soldiers and freed people alike.
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The ruling in Louisiana v Callais did not formally strike down section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The statute remains. What it can do does not. But strip away the procedural language and the ruling rests on a single premise: that America has changed enough that these protections are no longer necessary. Justice Alito wrote that “social change has occurred throughout the country and particularly in the South.” John Roberts has been making this argument since he was in Ronald Reagan’s justice department. It is the core of their position, and it deserves scrutiny.

Between 2012 and 2022, the racial turnout gap between white and nonwhite voters has widened, reaching 18 percentage points by 2022. The gap grew almost twice as fast in the very counties that section 5 of the Voting Rights Act once protected.


https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/may/03/racism-supreme-court-voting-right-act