The All-Out Assault on Black Voting

Republicans have moved to remove or weaken Black-majority congressional districts in Louisiana, Tennessee, Mississippi, and South Carolina. Louisiana lost one of its two majority-Black districts, while Tennessee removed its only Black-majority district and punished Democrats who protested by stripping them from state house committees. Mississippi’s governor predicted the end of the influence of Black congressman Bennie Thompson and expected new districts before the 2027 elections. South Carolina legislators are working to eliminate Representative Jim Clyburn’s plurality-Black district. These actions target Black political representation in Congress, affecting a region where more than half of the nation’s Black population lives. The Voting Rights Act previously blocked race-neutral schemes that diluted Black voting power, including racial gerrymandering, and helped increase minority representation.

"In Louisiana, which has six congressional representatives, Republicans moved rapidly to eliminate one of the state's two majority-Black districts. Tennessee Republicans redrew the state's congressional map to get rid of its only Black-majority district, in Memphis, then stripped Democrats who protested the move of their membership in state house committees. Governor Tate Reeves of Mississippi declared that the "reign of terror" of the state's lone Black congressman, Bennie Thompson, would soon be over, and announced that he expected lawmakers to draw new districts before the 2027 elections. South Carolina legislators are hard at work to eliminate Representative Jim Clyburn's plurality-Black district, the only one in the state."

"For many decades after Reconstruction, southern states deprived Black people of the right to vote while counting their bodies toward congressional seats. The 1965 Voting Rights Act effectively invalidated the superficially race-neutral schemes designed to deprive Black people of the vote. No longer able to directly deny the vote, racist lawmakers developed new methods of diminishing Black political power through schemes such as racial gerrymandering. Congress updated the VRA-repeatedly-to address these schemes. The law worked extraordinarily well, leading to dramatic increases in minority representation, a Congress that better reflected the diverse nation it represented, and, in 2008, a Black president."

"More than half of the United States' Black population lives in the South, so this amounts to an all-out assault on Black political representation in Congress. Since Barack Obama's election, conservatives have argued that the VRA's protections are no longer needed-indeed, that they are themselves racist. The backlash to "

Read at The Atlantic