In Callais v. Louisiana, the United States “Supreme” Court just eviscerated the Voting Rights Act of 1965, an extraordinarily hard-won piece of federal legislation aimed at ending racial discrimination in voting.

The tl;dr version is this:

The ruling effectively invalidates Section 2 of the VRA as it has been understood for four decades without explicitly striking down the statute… By allowing for the dismantling of minority districts currently held by Democrats, the ruling could provide the GOP enough additional seats to lock in the party’s control of the House for a generation.

There is nothing surprising about a 6-3 SCOTUS opinion wherein the six-asshole majority rewrites, neuters and/or hollows-out laws duly enacted by Congress or states that do not uphold white cis-het christian male supremacy. Conservatives are constitutionally (<-hahaha) incapable of envisioning a culture, society, community, institution, family structure, or indeed any human relationship that does not embody a strict hierarchy, as arbitrary, amoral, or immoral as it may be. This is why conservatives by nature hate democracy: because democracy is, at least aspirationally, a real-world manifestation of equality. One person = one vote.

THE HORROR. 😱

After Callais, the gerrymandering frenzy in Republican-led states has gone into hyperdrive, in an effort to lock in a permanent gain of House seats for the GOP. Dem politicians are responding accordingly in a manic frenzy to rewrite electoral maps in blue states to counter these measures.

The Dem reaction is all fine and dandy, and probably necessary in the immediate aftermath of the court’s transparently racist and anti-democratic excrescence. But the real travesty here will not be remedied so easily: racial minorities will remain disenfranchised and significantly underrepresented for the foreseeable future.

Gee Iris, I can hear you asking, What can I possibly do about this malevolent shitfuckery? Fear not! For I have the answer:

WHITE PEOPLE:
LET’S ALL FORFEIT OUR VOTES TO BLACK WOMEN.

No, I am not joking.

Hear me out, then see if you don’t agree. If you are a white person who votes, take this nifty 6-question quiz:

Are you anti-racist?

Are you anti-sexist?

Are you anti-Trump, anti-Republican, and/or anti-conservative, including anti-“moderate” conservative Democrats?

Do you understand that structural privilege unjustly benefits you at the expense of other groups?

Do you understand that unconscious bias affects your perceptions and preferences, no matter who you are or how much work you do to overcome it?

If you could eradicate your own racist and sexist unconscious bias, at least in the realm of electoral politics, would you want to (a) neutralize it, (b) empower minority voters in your community, and (c) enrage conservatives?

I know I sure would!

If you answered YES to all six questions, CONGRATULATIONS! You are a prime candidate to participate in the Forfeit-Your-Vote-to-Black-Women campaign!

If you answered NO to any of them, do me a favor and get the fuck out of here right now. And stay away, unless and until you have informed and educated yourself into a full slate of SIX YESES.

ANSWERING OBJECTIONS FROM POTENTIAL VOTE FORFEITEERS™️.
(I just made that word up. And I like it.)

Why should I give up my vote? 

Because the majority of white people in this country gave us President Trump 2.0 and a Republican Congress, so if anyone should be disenfranchised in this moment, it is people who look like us. But the point of this exercise is not to disenfranchise white voters, it is to help undo what the “Supreme” court just did. It is exceedingly rare that citizens can personally push back on the effects of a “Supreme” court decision. They limit minority voting power? We expand it, by forfeiting our votes to Black women.

But I’m not the problem. I always vote Democrat. 

Democratic voters and politicians are not magically free from unconscious racist and sexist bias. Do you approve of the Democratic Party enabling or outright supporting conservative economic policies, genocidal regimes, for–profit healthcare, and dirty energy? No? Then forfeit your vote to a Black woman.

What if I feel very strongly about a particular candidate?

Plenty of other white people will vote exactly as you would. Hell, go right ahead and encourage people to do so. Get out there and campaign for your preferred candidate if you want. But in recognition of your unconscious bias – and the sorry state of the Democratic party you’ve admittedly empowered – forfeit your vote to a Black woman.

Why a Black woman? Why not a Black man/any Black person? Or a Hispanic person, man or woman? 

Here’s why.

Of course, Black women are not a monolith. Voting overwhelmingly against Donald Trump – more so than any other demographic, by far – is not a proxy for democratic socialism or for anything else, except not wanting Donald Trump to be the president. A much more compelling analysis comes from examining which issues and policies Black women overwhelmingly support.

Black women do not feel either political party is looking out for their interests, and express dissatisfaction with their candidate options. (2024)

When asked what matters most, Black women listed financial security, affordable housing, and healthcare access at the top. Education, reproductive rights, and community safety were also key, but what ties them all together is survival. These aren’t ‘political issues.’ They’re everyday life. (2025)

Black women’s Equal Pay Day is July 21, 2026. Black Women experience one of the largest and most persistent wage gaps in the country due to both racial and gender discrimination. The impact compounds over a lifetime and limits wealth, homeownership, and retirement security. (2026)

The vast and growing economic disparity and hardship faced by Black women is consequential not only for their own lives, families and communities, but for the U.S. economy as a whole.

Black women are less likely to…

(via The Highland Project, fall 2025)

The impact is not only deeply personal – it will ripple throughout the economy. Given the $2 trillion in buying power in the Black community, this is not just a personal financial issue: it’s a national economic warning sign. If Black women reduce spending, there will be an economy-wide slowdown. (2025)

And yet despite – or perhaps because of? – bleak economic prospects, Black women are rising to the occasion.

Black women are more likely to invest their resources in…

(via The Highland Project, fall 2025)

Black women voters strongly support community-centered policies that…

(via The Highland Project, fall 2025)

The question shouldn’t be why should I forfeit my vote to a Black woman? The better question is WHY NOT.

Anything to disagree with there? No? Okay, moving on.

ANSWERING OBJECTIONS FROM BLACK WOMEN

This one’s easy: DON’T. (Feel free to write that down if you need to.) If a Black woman objects to your presence, your outreach, your approach, this specific project, your specific proposal to give her your vote, or to anything else, simply say, “I’m sorry to bother you,” immediately cease whatever you’re doing, then LEAVE HER THE FUCK ALONE.

If nothing else, I think we’ve established here that Black women have more than enough shit to deal with. If they do not have the inclination or the bandwidth to deal with you at any particular time – or ever – remember that they owe white people generally, and you specifically, absolutely nothing.

BUT BUT BUT HOW WOULD THIS EVEN WORK?

If you live in a district where you (still) have relatively easy access to a mail-in ballot, you can literally hand yours over to a Black woman and say, “Here, I want you to have my vote.” You can also reach out to a local Black church* or mosque, or to any Black-centered (and preferably woman-centered) organization, and inquire whether any Black woman there would be interested in doing your voting for you – particularly your primary voting. It is primary contests where a single vote packs a bigger punch, because fewer voters participate. You can also reach out on social media to Black women, and to recruit more Forfeiteers™️ in your community.

If you don’t live in a district where you (still) have relatively easy access to a mail-in ballot, you can still reach out to a Black woman in person, to the same Black/woman-centered institutions and organizations, or via social media and say, “I want to vote in the upcoming election exactly as you want me to. If you can trust me to do this, here is the sample ballot. Just fill it out and give it back to me, and I will vote that way.”

Any way you approach this task, it is an exercise in community building. This is a Very Good Thing. It absolutely terrifies people in power, because they much prefer us divided, not united.

White people have inherited and perpetuated the very power structures that continue to harm Black women more than any other voting demographic in the U.S. Forfeiting your vote to a Black woman is not some kind of atonement for all of the evils inflicted upon them, past and present, from which we white people routinely benefit. You don’t get a cookie for doing your small part to un-fuck what the “Supreme” court just royally fucked up.

We forfeit our votes. Black women get two. Conservatives shit themselves. There is no downside here.

________
*The “Black church,” writ large, is NOT the same as the same as any white or majority-white church. The history of the Black church in the U.S. is much too broad and deep a topic to do justice here, but there are a few critical points worth making.

One is that regardless of any particular religious tenets, the Black church has functioned as the premiere space, and often the only relatively safe (although not safe at all) gathering place for Black communities. Shut out of union halls, job networks, white churches, white schools, white clubs, and white public spaces generally, the Black church has served all of these functions for Black communities, and many more. Such places are key to the literal survival of Black communities, if not to the individuals that comprise them. Nearly every rural county, small town, and big city neighborhood where Black people live and work has at least one.

Second, if you answered “yes” to those quiz questions up there, you almost certainly share more in common, morally and politically, with many christians – Black or otherwise – than you do with conservative (or indifferent) atheists and agnostics. Lest we forget U.S. history, the Black church was the primary motivator and mobilizer of sustained, non-violent resistance movements which ultimately resulted in civil rights advances, including the newly-defunct Voting Rights Act of 1965. And christians were an essential driving force behind our erstwhile reproductive rights.

Third, and this is utterly irrelevant to this post, the music of the Black church is infinitely superior to anything I heard growing up in (white!) Catholic and Lutheran churches. My ears are still in open revolt from droning congregations plodding along to indistinguishable, uninteresting progressions of major chords. “Black church music” could not be more different: the monolithic monotony that dominates in white churches is exceedingly rare. Instead, multiple genres and musical flavors from the African diaspora prevail. But for me, what stands out more than anything else about the character of Black church music is its sheer life-affirming, celebratory, exuberance. I promise that if you fellow heathens can get past some lyrics, you are unlikely to be disappointed.