OPINION:
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that Louisiana’s newly redrawn congressional maps, which created a second voting district made up primarily of Black voters, were an “illegal” gerrymander based on racial considerations.
Democrats and liberals, including the three left-leaning justices on the high court, are crying foul, saying the Voting Rights Act has now been destroyed.
But this is a great ruling for Americans who believe in the spirit of the nation, rather than the divisiveness of the Democrat Party. It’s a ruling that sets aside a race card that should have been set aside years ago — at the very least, when Barack Obama was elected president by a large White population. How can the nation be inherently racist and in need of government-imposed race-based redistricting if 43 percent of Whites voted for Obama in 2008 and 39 percent of the same in 2012?
From Politico in November 2008: “Barack Obama, … the nation’s first African-American president, won the largest share of White support of any Democrat in a two-man race since 1976.”
It’s Marxists and socialists and communists and collectivists — all masquerading beneath the umbrella of the Democrat Party — who have pretended as if minorities in America don’t get a fair shake; that they’re somehow at a disadvantage because of skin color. While racism does indeed exist in America, the kind of racism the left likes to trot out as a political weapon — the kind they say where the country is flawed at root, racist to the bone, systemically discriminatory and in need of complete overhaul — well, that kind, it just doesn’t exist.
America is the land of opportunity, the nation of blind justice and equality for all, and while neither opportunity nor equality guarantees all achieve the same or reach the same level of success, the fact is, the guiding light of this country is: An individual’s dream can indeed become reality. Hard work, persistence, determination all pay off; some may win and achieve earlier or to higher heights than others, but that doesn’t change the fact that hard work, persistence and determination do pay in America. The government is not operated on a basis of inequality. Society is not separated by an imposition of classes.
So when Louisiana’s Democrats and civil rights groups pushed to redraw the state’s congressional map in the wake of the 2020 census, not once, but twice, thereby creating a second majority-Black district and leading to the election in 2024 of Cleo Fields, a Black former congressman who had previously served for another majority-Black district in the 1990s, what Louisiana’s Democrats and civil rights advocates were actually saying was that Blacks and minorities are at a disadvantage come election time. They were saying Black people couldn’t get elected to political office unless the voters in the electing district were mostly Black. They were saying Black people can’t be adequately represented in Congress or political offices except by other Black people.
They were saying America is racist at its core.
The court’s ruling doesn’t overturn the Voting Rights Act. It does, however, limit how the left can use race as a sole factor in determining the lines of voting districts.
Democrats will cry. Leftists will wail. In fact, they already are. In the end, the ruling slows the hand of those who are quick to throw down the race card whenever politics, elections and cultural matters arise.
In the end, the ruling unifies, not divides. And that means a stronger America for all.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter and podcast by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “God-Given Or Bust: Defeating Marxism and Saving America With Biblical Truths,” is available by clicking HERE.
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