The U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled in Louisiana v. Callais that Louisiana’s congressional map, which created a second majority–Black district, constituted an “unconstitutional racial gerrymander” and violated the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
The decision outraged much of the Black political and civil rights leadership, which immediately attacked the court’s decision:
—The NAACP called it a “license to silence Black voters and rig the voting system . . . a devastating blow to our democracy . . . ” It went further and urged “Black athletes’ families, fans, alumni . . . to withhold athletic and financial support from public universities in states that have moved to ‘limit, weaken, or erase Black voting representation.”
—Former President Barack Obama said the decision “effectively guts a key pillar of the Voting Rights Act, freeing state legislatures to gerrymander legislative districts to systematically dilute and weaken the voting power of racial minorities . . . “
—U.S. House Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jefferies, D-N.Y. said it threw the “American South back into the Jim Crow era.”
—Former Democratic Presidential Candidate Kamala Harris was so upset that she called for packing the Supreme Court, “Let’s invite ideas, for example, that are about Supreme Court reform, including the notion of expanding the court.”
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in Parents Involved v. Seattle School District No. 1, 551 U.S. 701 (2007): “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”
It’s obvious from the above comments that much of the liberal Black political and civil rights leadership vehemently disagrees.
Most Black and white progressives who condemned government separation of Blacks into their own political districts — “Homelands” — in South Africa’s old system of “Apartheid,” have no problem with government separation of Blacks in racially gerrymandered Congressional Districts.
Associate Justice Clarence Thomas was right on target in his concurring opinion, which held that the “ . . . Court should never have interpreted §2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to effectively give racial groupings an entitlement to roughly proportional representation. By doing so, the Court led legislatures and courts to ‘systematically divide [e] the country into electoral districts along racial lines.'”
He states an obvious truth, “Blacks [we]re drawn into ‘black districts’ and given ‘black representatives’; Hispanics [we]re drawn into Hispanic districts and given ‘Hispanic representatives’;. and so on.'”
He rightly concluded that such an ” . . . interpretation rendered Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act ‘repugnant to any nation that strives for the ideal of a color–blind Constitution,’ adding that the ” . . . decision should largely put an end to this ‘disastrous misadventure’ in voting–rights jurisprudence.”
Thomas accurately exposed the results of such division, which we see in many state and local elected political offices, especially in urban areas, such as school boards, city councils, and state legislative offices — many of which are composed of majority Black or Hispanic voting districts.
The problem is that too many in the Black political and civil rights establishment who strenuously object to discrimination against Blacks based on their race have no problem with discrimination against whites based on their race.
Much credit for this decision must go to Justice Thomas, whose 30–year effort to get the Court out of the business of race–based decisions has prevailed.
Political writer Abigail Thernstrom writes in her book “Voting Rights — and Wrongs” that race–based districts have kept “black legislators clustered together on the sidelines of American political life — precisely the opposite of what the statute intended.”
She goes on to state that such districts may “perversely limit the potential power of black officeholders” in that they “typically elect candidates to the left of most voters (and) rarely win in majority–white settings . . . “
For all the negatives of race–based redistricting, it can’t be denied that, if not for such Districts, many Black elected officials would not have been elected, gained seniority in their respective legislative bodies, and hence obtained power for their constituents.
How times have changed. In the current 119th Congress, there are 66 Black members of Congress –sixty–one in the House and five in the Senate.
In comparison, 40 years ago (1985–1986), 21 African American Members served in the House, and none in the Senate; and 60 years ago (1965–1966), there were six African American Members of Congress, all serving in the House in Black–majority districts.
As of 2026, there are only 27 congressional districts out of the total 435 where African
Americans make up a majority or plurality of voting–age constituents — eight and 19 respectively.
The other 408 districts are composed of districts where Blacks are neither in the majority nor form a plurality of voters.
It’s time for Democrats to start stop taking Black voters for granted, separating them in “Black” districts and start competing for their votes; and, Republicans must start realizing they need to attract Black voters to their cause based on issues.
That would be another victory for the high court’s decision.
Clarence V. McKee is president of McKee Communications, Inc., a government, political, and media relations and training consulting firm in Florida. He is the author of “How Obama Failed Black America and How Trump Is Helping It.” Read more Clarence V. McKee Insider articles — Click Here Now.