Spike Lee Calls Supreme Court Voiding Race-Based Redistricting Map in Louisiana an ‘Attack on Voters’

Director Spike Lee, in a recent interview with CNN, called the United State Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling declaring a race-based redistricting map in Louisiana an “attack on voters.”

“They’re going to be movies and documentaries about this period of the United States of America. With this guy in the White House — just down the block, right?” Spike Lee said of President Donald Trump. “It’s not the first this country’s been through stuff. And it’s found a better way to live and we gotta work at it.”

“Let’s realize, black folks, we got a lot of our stuff through voting,” the Malcolm X and BlacKkKlansman director said. “So, you know what the game plan is when you see this attack on voters. So, we know what they’re doing.”

Writing for the majority in the case, Louisiana v. Callais, No. 24–109 in the Supreme Court of the United States, Justice Samuel Alito accused lower courts of enforcing race-based discrimination as a mean to eradicate race-based discrimination. “Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was designed to enforce the Constitution — not collide with it. Unfortunately, lower courts have sometimes applied this Court’s §2 precedents in a way that forces States to engage in the very race-based discrimination that the Constitution forbids,” Justice Alito wrote.

“This tension between §2 and the Constitution came to a head when Louisiana redrew its congressional districts after the 2020 census. In 2022, a federal judge in the Middle District of Louisiana held that the map adopted by the state legislature likely violated §2 because it did not include an additional majority-black district,” Justice Alito explained. “But when the State drew a new map that contained such a district, its new map was challenged as a racial gerrymander.

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Constitution expert Jonathan Turley posted:

“Just for the record, the USSC did NOT strike down Section 2 of The Voting Rights Act.”

“The VRA is about combating intentional racial discrimination”.....
NOT about artificial, politically-calculated racial gerrymandering.

“The Court did say neither the law nor the Constitution allows legislators to manipulate
voting district lines to “guarantee” that candidates of a particular race will be elected.”

“The VRA was written NOT to give any race an advantage, but to PREVENT a state from creating a disadvantage for voters based on their race. The Act prevents any state from intentionally drawing districts to afford minority voters less opportunity because of their race.’”

(Emphasis added)

““Let’s realize, black folks, we got a lot of our stuff through voting,”

Okay...what?

They didn’t get approved to vote by voting. The Fifteenth Amendment (ratified in 1870) extended voting rights to men of all races. So for 250 years blacks have been able to vote. So have whites, reds, yellows, and browns.

And it didn’t do much for the right to vote they didn’t accomplish in. An example:

The Reconstruction era was noteworthy in that African American men were not only granted voting rights but even won several seats in Congress. Hiram Revels and Blanche Bruce became the first African Americans to be elected to the U.S. Senate, representing the state of Mississippi. After their terms in office the next Black person elected to the Senate was Edward Brooke of Massachusetts, nearly a century later in 1967. Where was that vote for a hundred years? And was it taken at the state level. The feds do not run elections.

Article I, Section 4, Clause 1

https://statesunited.org/resources/election-powers-2024/

In the 1960’s there was work to register Black people in Mississippi to vote. This project was powered by local activists and by over one thousand college student volunteers (most of whom were white) from the northern and western regions of the U.S.

I would be the last one to say that voting concerning blacks has not been a beneficial to the US. But only because it was voters and anything else that changed the process was a combination of all races and not just blacks. That’s how a democracy works. It doesn’t work with just one race in charge or taking all the benefits. And taking credit for or determining failure for is a joint effort. Not race. It’s up to the voters to determine the validity of their election. And if they don’t that’s their fault. But I don’t believe if all the blacks or the reds or browns or any color has the voting capacity in size to pass anything except in their home town and if they get the support of the other races. So making a threat to that context cannot be considered anything but a threat used in this manner and I take offense to it as I often have with him.

wy69

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