U.S. “Supreme” Court (image: public domain via rawpixel)
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.
