Black Democrats go There ….Redistricting Moving to ‘Jim Crow 2.0’

There IS NO Doubt that the results of the move to redistricting in many cases WILL disefrantis Black and other minority votes….

The Alito & Co. efforts to drag America BACK to places it thought it moved on from IS evident….

Not just for Black’s and Brown’s….

But also for Women and Others…

Black Democrats on Capitol Hill are up in arms over the GOP effort to purge Congress of minority districts, accusing Republicans of silencing Black voters and, in the process, undermining decades of civil rights advancements.

Many are framing the debate in existential terms, warning that the Republicans’ redistricting campaign, spurred by President Trump, combined with the Supreme Court’s recent decision to claw back provisions in the Voting Rights Act (VRA) — which has sparked another wave of partisan map-drawing across the South — will turn the clock back to the era of sanctioned discrimination and racial segregation that plagued the country under Jim Crow.

“What they have done in eviscerating the Voting Rights Act is to put us back in a position where Jim Crow can be the rule of the day for Black people,” Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) said.

“We are now, legally, in a posture where Black communities are not able to enforce a right to elect the representatives of their choice,” he continued. “And that is undemocratic, it’s racist, it’s wrong.”

The remarks reflect the outpouring of anger and anxiety that’s followed the Republicans’ redistricting push, particularly within the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), which is expected to lose at least a handful of members to the new maps.

Republicans maintain they’re just trying to even the playing field by eliminating race as a factor in redistricting. But Democrats say there’s a more nefarious strategy at play: suppressing the Black vote.

“It has nothing to do with party, it’s about race,” charged Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.). “Republicans are acting irrational by kicking Black folk out of Congress….

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Alito also suggested that Black participation at the polls has reached levels to suggest the country has evolved far enough, since 1965, that the anti-discriminatory goals of the VRA have been met.

“Vast social change has occurred throughout the country and particularly in the South,” Alito wrote.

Black Democrats are furious with those conclusions. They agree with former Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who had warned during a similar debate in 2013 that gutting the VRA protections by citing Black progress at the polls “is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.”…

…

“The ghost of the Confederacy has afflicted the United States Supreme Court majority and is invading and haunting the nation right now,” Jeffries said. “And we take that seriously.”

The protests aside, the Supreme Court ruling has triggered a mad dash among red states, particularly those in the South, to redraw their maps ahead of November….

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Black Democrats, especially those of an older generation, are challenging the notion that the current redistricting fight is nothing new under the sun. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.), 81, who is expected to lose his seat in Kansas City as a result of GOP redistricting, said he hasn’t seen such a coordinated effort to undermine Black power since the 1960s.

“We have not been this much of a target,” Cleaver said. “I don’t know if I would say that this is a complete turn to the Jim Crow era. But make no mistake, it’s a return to some of the antics that we witnessed in the Jim Crow era.”….

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