Racism is a life issue because it directly attacks human dignity and threatens life, similar to abortion or euthanasia.
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops
The United States Supreme Court overturned the requirement for equal representation that is the reason for the Voting Rights Act of 1964. They also resurrected the moral insanity Jim Crow.
The Supreme Court, by doing this, they also overturned 60 years of previous Supreme Court rulings that gave teeth to the 14th Amendments’ requirements for equal protection under the law and equal representation in government for black people.
The Court not only pulled the teeth from the Voting Rights Act, they rushed their judgement as fast and hard as they could. Normally, a ruling by the Supreme Court does not take effect for 32 days. This allows those who want to file appeals for the Court to reconsider or modify their ruling to do so.
But this Court set that aside for this particular ruling, saying that it must take effect immediately. They also issued an “emergency” ruling that allows states to stop on-going elections in order to re-draw districts in such a way that black people would not have sufficient numbers in any district to elect a black representative to Congress or state legislatures.
According to this Supreme Court, it’s a huge “emergency” to make sure that black Americans are not able to elect black people to Congress or state legislatures. The goal is to make sure that when the role is called next January, only white folk — presumably MAGA Republican white folk — are there to answer.
This is naked, open, in-your-face racism. It is a high-class judicial lynching of the 14th Amendment. It overturns 60 years of precedent established by the Supreme Court itself and brings back the bad old days when 25% of the population of United States of America cannot hope to elect someone who will put their interests first in the halls of power.
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia — slave states all — were the first to move to do away with black Congressional districts in their states. They jumped into action within hours of the ruling.
Governors of these states moved within hours of the ruling to stop on-going elections and call emergency sessions of their legislatures to re-draw their congressional maps to eliminate black congressional districts. Not long after that, Tennessee jumped on the Jim Crow bandwagon.
I doubt if, after this is all done, there is a single black congressional seat left anywhere in the old slave states. Given the virulent racism of the MAGA movement, it wouldn’t surprise me to see this vicious evil spread through many of the “red” states in other parts of the country.
What we are going to see is an onslaught of new Congressional and legislative maps from Republican-dominated states that divide up black areas into razor thin slivers. That will keep black people from having the votes necessary to elect a black person anywhere in the state. This has the potential to almost entirely eliminate black representation in the United States House of Representatives and in our state legislatures.
However, there is another side to this. The black populations in the same states which have jumped hardest and fastest on the move to do away with black Congressional districts are large enough to actually determine the outcome of statewide elections.
If black people vote in sufficiently large numbers, they may lose representation in the House of Representatives, but they could very well end up deciding who the next United States Senator from their state will be. They could do the same thing in elections for governor and other statewide offices.
Let me try to make this clear. The legislatures in the old slave states and the new MAGA racist states can gerrymander black Congressional districts and legislative seats entirely out of existence. The Supreme Court has not only said they can do this, it has labeled doing it an “emergency.”
The Supreme Court has come out hard for Jim Crow. The weakness in their evil plan is that gerrymandering has no effect on a United States Senate seat, or a Governor’s race, or any other statewide election.
Black people who live in Jim Crow states stand to lose their representation in the United States House of Representatives and in state legislatures. The governors of those states are acting like the Court set off a gold rush and they’re fighting to get there and do the dirty ahead of everyone else.
You would think that being a hate-filled, racist scumbag was some kind of honor.
There’s a lot more I could say. But I want to keep this simple.
The Catholic Church has already spoken about equal rights under the law. It staked out its position in favor of voting rights back when it was a dangerous position to take.
The Church has explicitly affirmed its support for the Voting Rights Act. In Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops teach that Catholics should take “vigorous action to remove barriers to education, protect voting rights… and ensure equal employment for women and minorities.”
The late Archbishop Beltran, the former Archbishop of the diocese where I live, marched with Martin Luther King at Selma. In Open Wide our Hearts, America’s Catholic bishops teach that racism is a life issue because it directly attacks human dignity and threatens life, similar to abortion or euthanasia.
I oppose what the Supreme Court did as a Catholic, and a Christian. Racism is a sin against God.
What the Supreme Court did this week brings shame on America. It shoves this great nation back into the cesspool of government-protected racial discrimination. It is a direct and open move to undo the hard-won gains of the Civil Rights Movement and bring back the suffering and horror of Jim Crow.
The decision is a high-class judicial lynching of the 14th Amendment. It is anathema.
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