Transcript: Trump and the Supreme Court Are Crushing Black Power

Political scientists Hakeem Jefferson and Jake Grumbach say that we are witnessing a massive rollback of Black political power through Supreme Court decisions.

This is a lightly edited transcript of the May 8 edition of Right Now With Perry Bacon. You can watch the video here or by following this show on YouTube or Substack.

Perry Bacon: I’m Perry Bacon. I’m the host of The New Republic show Right Now. I’m joined by two great political scientists. Hakeem Jefferson is at Stanford University. Jake Grumbach is at the University of California, Berkeley. It’s afternoon for them, just barely—they’re on the West Coast. I’m glad they’re joining us today.

These are two people I really enjoy talking to, but we’re talking to them at a time that’s not that great. Literally about an hour ago, Tennessee voted to eliminate their majority-Black congressional district. You’re seeing Alabama, South Carolina, a bunch of states talking about doing that after the Supreme Court ruling last week further gutting—almost invalidating—the Voting Rights Act. So we’re going to talk about the fallout from that and what it means for Black representation. Thanks, guys, for joining me.

Hakeem Jefferson: Thanks for having us. Glad to be here, Perry.

Bacon: Hakeem, just talk about that first of all.

Jefferson: Out of the gate, man. Out of the gate. Go ahead.

Bacon: The question I want to ask you all specifically is: Alito, Roberts, the Supreme Court is basically saying that Black people are Democrats, so gerrymandering is about partisanship, and so it’s fine if we get rid of all the Black congressional districts because those are just Democrats. And the Republicans won the majority in those states, so they get to draw the lines. So why does it matter that Black representation goes down in these states?

Jefferson: Thanks again for having us, Perry. I’m going to let Jake, because Jake had some insights that I thought were just right on the money in the piece he wrote—so I’ll let Jake talk about the sort of foolishness of the court’s thinking when it comes to partisanship and race, given what we political scientists, I think, and the broad public know about the overlapping nature of partisanship and race in the U.S. So I’m going to let Jake set the groundwork for that.

But at the top: the Voting Rights Act is perhaps the most effective—if not one of the most effective—pieces of legislation in the country’s history. The sort of post–Civil War amendments were meant to enshrine these rights for Black folk. But we know, across the American South in particular, there were these attempts to burden the franchise for Black people. The Voting Rights Act comes along and helps to ensure that Black people got to enjoy access to the ballot without the burdens that lots of local jurisdictions tried to put in front of them.

And so it just so happens I’ve been reading this work by political scientist Katherine Tate. And she, early on, was thinking about: what’s the reason that we might care about Black political representation? What does it matter? And so we have these expectations that Black representatives—who descriptively represent Black constituents—might have preferences, might have priorities that differ from their white counterparts.

And so we might expect, for example, that if Black representatives have life experiences that align with Black constituents, they might prioritize issues related to criminal justice. We might remember, for example, the leadership that many Black representatives had in the aftermath—this will sound long ago—of Trayvon Martin’s death at the hands of George Zimmerman. It was Black representatives who really put out the clarion call about whether a young Black man wearing a hoodie should confront death in the way that Trayvon did.

So we might have expectations that Black members of Congress are going to be better advocates for issues like criminal justice or for various redistributive programs. You see in the Senate, for example, Black women really holding Secretary Kennedy’s feet to the fire when it comes to access to vaccines or maternal health—Black maternal health.

And so we might expect that descriptive representation comes with some substantive purchase. And so the decline of Black representation is not only a slap in the face to the progress made for multiracial democracy, but we might worry that it will come with some substantive declines for issues that Black folks care about and that matter to them materially.

Bacon: Let me follow up on one question. So today, the district that was eliminated is in the Memphis area. The representative’s name is Steve Cohen. He is not Black. So talk about that—that kind of just helps explain why that’s a loss as well.

Jefferson: Yeah. So when Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, and we talk about Black folks having the right to select representatives of their choice—that choice needn’t be a descriptive member of the group. It doesn’t mean that—it’s often the case that Black folks who are voting for members of Congress, given residential segregation and the like, perhaps that choice would be a Black representative. But sometimes the choice is to have somebody who has substantive priorities and interests that are aligned with theirs.

And in the context of American politics—as I’m sure Jake’s going to lay out even more eloquently—in the context of American politics, that means, for many and most Black folks, having the opportunity to vote for a Democratic politician and having substantive numbers such that their support for that candidate can get them over the finish line. But I think it’s a really good opportunity for Jake to lay out even more clearly the way that partisanship and race are so intertwined in American life.

Bacon: Go ahead, Jake.

Jake Grumbach: Yeah. Great to be with you guys. Thanks, Perry, for organizing this conversation. Always great to be along with a friend and collaborator—and, unfortunately, at an inferior school slightly to myself—Hakeem Jefferson. But otherwise, excellent to see you.

And I think that’s right. Just to continue on Steve Cohen in Tennessee as a candidate of choice of a racial minority group—that is central to Voting Rights Act Section Two, which just got cut in Callais by the Supreme Court. The idea of a candidate of choice—it can be like a proxy, it’s more likely to be a member of that racial minority group. But Steve Cohen is a long-serving, popular representative with a majority-Black constituency. He’s a Central Eastern European Jewish guy in ethnic background. But you should quickly YouTube him.

Bacon: Just hear his voice.

Jefferson: That’s right.

Jake Grumbach: Yeah. That dude is Memphis. Like you could be like, “Oh yeah, 8Ball & MJG and Three 6 Mafia, and Steve Cohen.” It actually—

Jefferson: He spent time around some Black people. So—

Grumbach: Yeah. You—so he’s a candidate of choice in this way of the Black community of the district.

But taking a step back here, let’s think about what the—Hakeem spoke about the Voting Rights Act as one of the most effective pieces of legislation in American history. It’s also the culmination—like Hakeem mentioned—it’s the enforcement of the Reconstruction Amendments after the Civil War: the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. The 13th Amendment—ban on slavery. The 14th Amendment—equality under the law, which is really codified in the Civil Rights Act of 1964—

Jefferson: And importantly, birthright citizenship.

Grumbach: Exactly—and birthright citizenship, right? So the 14th Amendment says, unlike the Dred Scott decision of the Supreme Court before the Civil War—that said Black people can never be citizens—this says you’re a citizen when you’re born in the U.S. Birthright citizenship. And citizens and all people on U.S. soil are entitled to equality under the law, to due process, jury of your peers—your people have to be able to serve on juries too. That sort of equality under the law, which was violated by Jim Crow—eventually the Civil Rights Act of 1964 ends that.

And the 15th Amendment is no ban on voting on the basis of race or previous condition of servitude. And the Jim Crow voting laws violated that. And it wasn’t until the 1965 Voting Rights Act—the crown jewel of the civil rights movement—actually enforces the 15th Amendment, and to some extent the 14th Amendment as well.

That said, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 has different sections. Section Five of the Voting Rights Act was the preclearance section. This said former Jim Crow areas—counties and states—if you’re going to change your voting laws or redistrict, you’re going to have to pass that through the U.S. Justice Department. And at the time under Obama, when this is being litigated, it’s Eric Holder as attorney general. He gets to say, You’re thinking about changing your voting laws? Is this going to suppress votes? Is this some sort of small version of Jim Crow? You have to review this with us.

The Shelby County [2013] Supreme Court decision ends Section Five with a similar logic. John Roberts says basically: racism’s over, Section Five is done, no more preclearance. We see a wave of election law changes by state legislatures and the changing of voting procedures—purges of voter rolls. The things you know as voter suppression in the 2010s come after the Shelby County decision.

But then Section Two—what it says: Section Two is the vote dilution provision. That’s mostly about redistricting, and it’s been sort of interpreted in subsequent judicial opinions. There’s a standard, and that standard is what we talked about—that racial groups, and particularly racial minority groups, have the ability to select their candidates of choice, and that they’re not blocked from voting, registering to vote, and then voting for those candidates of choice.

And that the district system is not set up in a way to constantly have a racial majority group—usually white people, but it depends on the place—block those candidates of choice through overwhelming voting against them, either at the primary or general election, such that those candidates of choice of the racial minority group get to be in office. That is the standard of Section Two. The Supreme Court in Callais ended that.

Now, what are the long-term ramifications of ending Section Two here, when we think about redistricting? Partisan gerrymandering—that is, a state legislature who controls districting—this is very unique in the U.S. system. State governments draw districts and determine voting laws for the most part, within the Voting Rights Act, whatever the Supreme Court says is allowed of something like the Voting Rights Act which is Congressional legislation and the Constitution. So that’s unique—around the world, it’s usually the national government that regulates voting and elections and districting, not states. But states do it.

Partisan gerrymandering has long been legal. You can actually say, we are setting up this map to maximize the seats from my party and minimize the seats of the other party. The only thing you couldn’t do is racially gerrymander. If in that partisan map, racial minority groups that are a coherent community, that vote cohesively for candidates of choice, that repeatedly choose candidates that they support in majorities—those candidates have to be able to take office. So you can only partisan-gerrymander so much.

The racial Voting Rights Act Section Two blocks the extent to which you can gerrymander by saying, No—Black, Latino, Asian American, Native Americans in cohesive communities have to be able to elect their candidates of choice. With that falling away, what we now have—especially in the U.S. South—is that you can fully do Republican gerrymanders without having to think about the many hundreds of thousands and millions of Black voters electing their candidates of choice. This allows more extreme Republican gerrymanders, and it’s going to allow more extreme Democratic gerrymanders in blue states.

So that’s the outcome, and the biggest casualty is Black representation. For the parties, it’s going to mildly help Republicans, but Democrats can gerrymander more effectively too now, so it’ll even out a little. The big casualty is Black representation—to some extent Latino representation in other parts of the country, but mostly Black representation in the South is the casualty here for the long term.

Bacon: Let me follow up on the blue state part. I don’t think—

Grumbach: There can be many more effects of this—

Bacon: The blue state part—I don’t think I fully understand. Explain how blue states could reduce Black representation. Is that what you’re saying? Explain that a little bit.

Grumbach: Yeah. So in blue states there’s less racially polarized voting because the racial groups tend to vote more similarly. There are still racial differences in voting in blue states, but in a state like Illinois, Black and white liberals—they vote more consistently. There are still big differences, like Hakeem said—different priorities. But it’s not as different as when you go to a Deep South state, where it’ll be 90 percent of white people vote one way, 90 percent of Black people vote another way.

In a state like Illinois or California or Massachusetts—Black people in Martha’s Vineyard—that is not how racial voting works in the Northeast or West Coast or Midwest. That’s not how Detroit looks. Atlanta, even in the South—urban white people in Atlanta are not voting 90 percent against the Black people, and Black people are not voting 90 percent against those.

What I mean there is: if you wanted to maximize the number of blue seats in a state, what you want to do is get every district to have 51 percent blue voters and make the Republican voters have no ability to set seats. What that does is chop up cohesive racial groups more than otherwise would.

So I would say it’s not going to be as significant as the hit to Black representation in the South. But we will see a little bit of an increased ability—and we’ll see how Democrats play this and how the maps end up. The idea that now you don’t have to worry about racial minority groups just opens up the types of maps you can draw on the basis of........

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