The Voting Rights Decision

 Last August, thanks to a column by Linda Greenhouse, I anticipated the voting rights decision that the Supreme Court just handed down, and said that I thought that it would in fact do some good--a rare, but not unheard of, position on the left side of the political fence.  The decision has come down as expected.  The logic of Justice Alito's opinion is at times quite depressing.  The Supreme Court has already ruled, tragically in my opinion, that politically motivated gerrymandering does not contravene the Constitution, and Scalia's decision rests on the idea that the Louisiana Republicans stuck with one black (and therefore Democratic) district for political rather than racial reasons.  I think that is probably true, but it doesn't make me feel better about the logic.  I don't think states should have the right to devalue the votes of perhaps 45 percent of their voters because they will vote against the candidates that the other 55 percent want.  I would like to ask you all to read (or reread) the post I wrote last August.  I will highlight two points.  First of all, the 1982 amendments to the Voting Rights act, which many now accuse the court of eviscerating, specifically denied any right of any racial group to be represented proportionally.  Secondly, as I pointed out at length in the post, I don't think we'll have any meaningful progress towards economic equality as long as poor black Americans vote for one party and poor white Americans (a larger number) vote for the other one.  The creation of black majority districts has contributed to that result, and removed any incentive for either party to build interracial coalitions, especially in the South.  The black vote in the US was solidly Republican until 1936 and has been solidly Democratic since 1964.  It was no accident that the 1936-64 period saw by far the greatest progress towards racial equality that we have ever experienced.  The parties were competing for black votes.