The Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais probably closes the book on the use of the Voting Rights Act to ensure Black voting rights in the South. The decision is being taken as a blow to Black voting rights — and even as indicative of the court’s racist leanings — but I wouldn’t jump to those conclusions. The redistricting effort that Callais ends may not have been of unequivocal benefit to the Southern Blacks it was designed to aid. And while it could damage Democratic prospects in 2026, it might help them in the longer run.
During the 1980s, the NAACP, Jesse Jackson’s PUSH, and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) teamed up with leading Republicans, who donated money and redistricting experts, to create majority-minority districts in the South that would guarantee Black representation in Congress. Maybe that was a worthy effort. It led, in effect, to the racial integration of the U.S. House of Representatives. But as Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) warned (and as I have written repeatedly over the years), it doomed the Democrats to political irrelevance in what had once been the Democratic South. And it also made possible the passage of bills and election of officials that disadvantaged the minority voters it was supposed to help.
The redistricting concentrated Democratic votes in a few districts, but made it difficult, if not impossible, for the Democrats to build multiracial coalitions in other districts that had formerly been the province of centrist and liberal white Democrats like Rep. Butler Derrick of South Carolina who went down to defeat in the 1990s. The redistricting also created the bigoted impression that the Democrats in the South were the “Black party.” It is hard to remember but in the 1970s, Mississippi had a pro-civil rights administration led by Gov. Cliff Finch (D).
As Carl Hulse suggests in an excellent article in the New York Times, just as the 1980s-’90s redistricting came back to bite the Democrats, the current effort could come back to haunt the Republicans by creating more competitive districts. That may require, however, legislative or judicial efforts to limit the crazy political gerrymandering that, at Donald Trump’s instigation, both parties are engaged in.
