"THIS IS THE AMERICAN STORY"

 “THIS IS THE AMERICAN STORY”

The stunning events of last week remind us that the maintenance of white supremacy IS the American story.  With the SCOTUS 6-3 decision in Louisiana v. Callais to further eviscerate the Voting Rights Act, most of the Southern states wasted no time in seeking to redistrict so that Black people would be deprived of their votes.  It was as if they were all lining up to get a date with a hunky matinee idol.  Then the Virginia Supreme Court overturned Virginia’s voter referendum by a 4-3 vote to redistrict their state, and the white supremacists are cheering it on.  

Though I am hoping that this is not true, it is likely that this is the culminating point of a long period to suppress the votes of Black and Brown people.  When the federal troops pulled out of the South in 1877 in the “Great Compromise,” it pointed to a long slide back into neo-slavery.  The Mississippi Plan of 1890 led the way for all Southern states to strip Black people of their voting rights.  In 1896 SCOTUS decided 8-1 in Plessy v. Ferguson that “separate but equal” was the law of the land, thus codifying neo-slavery for almost 70 years.  It is interesting to note that both the Plessy decision of 1896 and the Callais decision of 2026 came out of the state of Louisiana.  

Neo-slavery (not “Jim Crow,” as it is often called – a misnomer that seeks to soften the blow of reinstituting slavery as much as possible) ruled as a center part of the American story until the Voting Rights Act (VRA) was passed in 1965.  John Roberts came into the Reagan Administration in 1980 as a lawyer determined to dismantle the Voting Rights Act, so that white supremacy could be clearly re-established again.  He led the SCOTUS decision in 2013 in Shelby v. Holder, which was the first major blow to the VRA.  It dismantled the provision of the VRA that required that all election-related changes in the Southern states had to be pre-approved by the Justice Department.  In the current Trumpster Department of Injustice, this might not have mattered, but for almost 50 years, it forced Southern white legislatures to seek some bit of equity as they sought to revive and continue the power of neo-slavery.

Now the floodgates are open for re-establishing neo-slavery, and though it is hard to imagine that being done, we only have to skim the surface of American history to realize that this pattern of establishing and protecting white supremacy IS THE American story.  In the Constitution, Black people and Indigenous people are deemed “three fifths” of a person, so this American story is deep and long and wide.  Women had no right to vote in the Constitution, and it took over 70 years of labor and protest and marching to get that right in the Constitution in the 19th Amendment.  It is hard not to be discouraged in this kind of atmosphere, but we must start where we are – THIS IS THE AMERICAN STORY.  The desire to establish white, male supremacy is at the heart of American history, and whether we have the 19th Amendment or the Voting Rights Act, all of the efforts to move us to codify our ideals of equality and justice and equity fly in the face of this American reality – we want, we believe that white men should be in charge of things.

In these discouraging days, we must remember witnesses like Ida B. Wells, who was born into slavery in Mississippi and who lived almost all of her life under the power of neo-slavery.  She refused to accept the definition of herself as unequal because of her racial classification, and she refused to stand down and defer to men of any racial classification because she was a woman.  If you want to know more about her and her relevance, read the book that Dr. Catherine Meeks and I wrote about Wells “Passionate for Justice:  Ida B. Wells as Prophet For Our Time.”  In the midst of raging racism and sexism, she was fearless, ferocious, formidable….Now, we are not Ida B. Wells, but her witness for such a time as this calls on us to find our place in this small but great parade of witnesses who stood for justice, equality, and equity.