Call Out Alabama’s Defiant Racism

I lived in Alabama decades ago and I am continually shocked at how the state has regressed and now seems run by open white supremacists and "Christian" extremists.  When I lived there the racism that did exist was more subtle and politicians at least acted in a manner that did not broadcast to the world that the state was a hot bed of racists and misogynists' in general.  Fast forward to today and the majority of the Republican members of the Alabama legislature might just as well don their Klan robs before entering the Capitol.  A case in point is the state legislature's refusal to abide a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that directed the states congressional maps be redrawn to include two majority black districts in recognition of the reality that 27% of the population is black.  Now, for a second time the gerrymandered congressional map has been struck down by a three panel federal court - two judges are Trump appointees - and the court assigned court-appointed experts to draw three potential maps that each include two districts where Black voters have a realistic opportunity of electing their preferred candidate.  A piece at CNN looks at the racism rampant in Alabama (sadly, there are elements in Virginia - e.g., The Family Foundation that descends from those backing Massive Resistance - that would happily follow Alabama's extremism).  Here are highlights:

The current US Supreme Court, stacked with right-wing justices, has in recent years dismantled many of the core civil rights programs of the past 50 years, from voting rights to affirmative action to anti-discrimination law. So it came as a surprise — and for many, a relief — when the court handed down a 5-4 decision in June, declining to gut the remaining provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Instead, the court found that Alabama’s new redistricting plan discriminated against Black voters and ordered the state legislature to redraw it.

Their new map is out, and it makes clear that the Republican-controlled legislature in Alabama has flouted the court order. Republican Gov. Kay Ivey seemed content to ignore it as well when she signed the redistricting bill (which must now go to a federal court for approval). “The Legislature knows our state, our people and our districts better than the federal courts or activist groups,” she said in a statement.

This defiance of the court by Alabama Republicans is notable not because their objection to the ruling is unique or surprising  — there has been widespread frustration with the Supreme Court’s other recent rulings as well as calls to question this court’s legitimacy — but rather what they are defying. They are rejecting an order to stop discriminating against Black people. Understood in that historical vein, the action of Alabama Republicans fits into a long, sordid backstory.

For much of the Supreme Court’s history, the justices were firmly on the side of discrimination. In the years preceding the Civil War, the court decided in Dred Scott v. Sandford that no Black person could be a citizen of the United States, regardless of whether they were enslaved or free. In 1883, it struck down the federal Civil Rights Act of 1875 that had “affirmed the equality of all persons in the enjoyment of transportation facilities, in hotels and inns, and in theaters and places of public amusement.”  In the 1896 case Plessy v. Ferguson, the court legally sanctioned the segregation regimes emerging across the South.

That started to change in 1938, when the court began to lay the groundwork for the civil rights jurisprudence of the mid- 20th century. . . . Justice Harlan Stone suggested in his majority opinion that, while the court presumed the constitutionality of many laws, there was an exception: Should the court be asked to evaluate laws that discriminated against “discrete and insular minorities,” it would apply a higher standard of judicial review. That notion of “strict scrutiny” would inform a number of the court’s rulings against racial discrimination in the years that followed, most notably in the unanimous Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954 ordering desegregation of schools.

As the court came to embrace civil rights, racial conservatives began to defy it. Though the right found itself at odds with the court on a number of fronts in the mid-20th century, including on issues like school prayer and abortion, it was on issues of desegregation that they were the most actively in defiance of the court. Massive resistance, the sustained refusal of White Americans to comply with desegregation orders, fueled a generation of activists. By 1963, nearly a decade after the Brown decision, only 1% of Black students in the South went to school with White students. It would take federal troops and the National Guard to enforce desegregation orders in the South, and still, White legislators and parents often opted to close schools entirely rather than desegregate.

The courts historically have faced White resistance whenever they have sided with Black civil rights. The Alabama ruling is no exception. Even in an era when the court is rapidly rolling back anti-discrimination jurisprudence — weakening the Voting Rights Act, greenlighting discrimination against LGBTQ consumers, ending affirmative action — even the mildest move to retain existing protections sparks resistance. That tells us less about the court and more about the political power — and impunity — still wielded by pro-discrimination forces, decades after the Civil Rights Movement.

Republicans’ defiance in Alabama is wrong not only because it violates a court order but also because it seeks to dilute Black voting in the state, part of a century-long effort to deny Black voters equal rights. As the fight over the state’s redistricting efforts continues to play out, that denial, rather than the Republicans’ defiance, should be the central focus.