Southern states are saying Black people aren’t really Black
This is bold. They’re trying to say that Black people of mixed race/ethnicity aren’t really Black which means they shouldn’t be counted for the purposes of the Voting Rights Act. It brings to mind the old quip from Obama when he was questions about whether he was ‘authentic” enough: “You know, when I’m catching a cab in Manhattan in the past, I think I’ve given my credentials.”
Since a 2003 ruling by the Supreme Court, that definition of “Black” has included every person who identifies as Black on census forms — including people who check off the boxes for Black and any other racial or ethnic category such as white, Asian and Hispanic or Latino, which the federal government considers to be an ethnicity that can be of any race.
Republican state officials, however, have called for narrower definitions of Blackness that do not include people who also identify with another minority group.
Citing no evidence, GOP officials in Alabama argued in lower court filings that limiting the definition to people who mark just the “Black” box and do not identify as Latino for the census would be “most defensible.”
And in the Louisiana case — Ardoin v. Robinson — officials have been arguing for the definition to only include people who check off either just the “Black” box or both “Black” and “White” and do not identify as Latino.
Before appealing their redistricting case to the Supreme Court, Alabama officials dropped their push to redefine Blackness.
But the state of Louisiana and its Republican secretary of state, Kyle Ardoin, have asked the country’s highest court to weigh in with a final word on which definition should be used in Section 2 cases.
Lower courts have already found that even when using more limited definitions of “Black” as proposed by the Republican officials, the premise of the courts’ analyses of the voting maps does not change.
Still, in one filing to the high court, Louisiana officials say using the more expansive definition of Blackness, which includes all people who identify themselves as Black, to analyze the state’s new map of congressional districts is an “independent legal error warranting this Court’s intervention.”
Do they think people are identifying themselves that way on census forms in order to game the redistricting system? That’s just daft.
No, they have a plan:
A narrower definition of “Black” could end up allowing other redistricting plans to minimize Black voting strength.
How the Supreme Court decides the case over Alabama’s congressional map, however, could have broader implications on the political power of all voters of color. Many voting rights advocates are watching to see if enough of the court’s conservative majority adopts one of Alabama’s more extreme arguments — that race cannot be taken into account when drawing voting districts unless there’s evidence of intentional racial discrimination.
A ruling along those lines could make it virtually impossible to use Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act to challenge voting maps in the future, turning how “Black” is defined in redistricting into a less urgent question.
Still, the challenges Republican state officials have already made on who counts as Black have raised uneasy questions about the complicated history of defining Blackness and the future of Black voting power in a country where growing numbers of people identify with more than one race.
Who are these people to decide who’s Black and who isn’t? But I guess they think they have a chance with this court:
Kareem Crayton — a former law professor and redistricting consultant who advised Alabama’s Democratic state House minority leader during the drawing of the state’s new congressional map — says he did not expect Alabama GOP lawmakers to challenge the definition of Blackness in court given that they’ve publicly emphasized they drew congressional districts “race-blind.”
“It was a mild surprise that a group that had in many places tried their best not to talk about race, at least in the formal proceedings, all of a sudden took a very, let’s just say, staunch and, I’d say, retrograde understanding of race and decided to say that in court,” Crayton adds. “It also made me wonder how much the Republican lawmakers were willing to just take their chances in court. That is, maybe this legislature looked at the U.S. Supreme Court and said, ‘You know, we’re going to try our hand at revisiting what most people thought about both racial definitions and, frankly, the state of the law on race and how race is used.’ “
Sure,why not? They’ve come through for them on voting rights up until now. Is there any limit on what the Supremes will do to prevent Black people from getting a fair chance? I don’t think so.