(Todd A. Smith)
Voting is not just casting a ballot for the candidate that a person likes.
It is also represented in government, with officials who will address the concerns of their community.
The United States Supreme Court recently struck down a predominantly Black congressional district in Louisiana, ruling that districts designed to give minorities representation at the U.S. Capitol are unconstitutional.
Many people praised the ruling.
Some even said that the ruling makes Martin Luther King, Jr.’s message of a colorblind society a reality.
But potentially having only predominantly White congressional districts will not make America colorblind.
It will only mean that one color will have a voice in politics, and that is the voice of White people.
None of this should be surprising to anyone who has studied American history.
Every time Black people make progress in this country, many White people strike back to regain absolute power and silence any thoughts of equal power.
During the Reconstruction era, when Black politicians began to find success, Jim Crow laws and disenfranchisement followed.
Former President Barack Obama’s historic election in 2008 was too much for White racists to take.
I can still remember regular Americans telling news reporters that they would never call him president.
After eight years of a so-called post-racial America, the country’s true colors started to show again with the two elections of President Donald Trump.
The Make America Great Again movement is simply a movement to make America White again.
Those who vow to take back their country mean taking it back from Black and Brown people.
And to take America back from Black and Brown people, Republican politicians and conservative judges had to find a way to stop people of color from voting.
That is why President Trump has championed the so-called SAVE America Act, which would make it harder to vote because people would need their original birth certificates, pay for passports, or do other things that would make it harder for them to vote.
Because racism often wants to hide itself behind patriotism, conservatives could not just outlaw Black and Brown people from voting.
They had to make it seem legit, ethical and morally upright.
Therefore, they did not strip Black and Brown people of the right to vote.
They just made it basically impossible for Black and Brown people to have real Black and Brown people represent their concerns via politics.
Sure, Black and Brown people will have candidates to vote for that look like them.
But because districts will be gerrymandered into being overwhelmingly White in Republican states at least, those candidates will have little chance of success.
The only Black and Brown national politicians that we will see, if we do not act quickly, will be those who crave White acceptance and are ashamed of the skin that they are in.
Black Americans will only get the Byron Donalds and the Tim Scotts of the world, not the Cleo Fields and Jasmine Crocketts of the world.
When Black people face systemic racism, they will not have many allies to fight for them within government leadership.
When Black people face police brutality and racial profiling, they will not have allies who support police reform.
When it comes to Historically Black Colleges and Universities being free to be Black, we will not have the unapologetic Black warriors from the past who fought tooth and nail for Black people to get what was theirs.
First, Republicans whitewashed American history by eliminating what truly happened to Black ancestors because the truth upset racist White people.
Then the current Trump administration made it more difficult for Black government workers to get justice when they are victimized by racism in the workforce.
Next, the Trump administration got rid of diversity, equity and inclusion because the administration wanted all non-Whites to be excluded from any position of importance of power.
Then, the Supreme Court got rid of using race in the college admission process, even though the disadvantages that many Black youngsters face are due to systemic racism and discrimination that their people have always been subjected to.
But the icing on the cake will always be the gutting of the precious Voting Rights Act of 1965, which has been predicted by many Democrats for years.
Despite their desperate pleas, though, many Black and Brown Americans did not take their warnings seriously.
Unfortunately, it may be too late now.
What makes it worse is that so many Black people voted for this.
So many Black Americans voted to have their voice taken away because they thought that they would get another stimulus check or would not support a woman as president.
So many Black Americans talked about leaving the Democratic plantation, just to go to an even stricter plantation in GOP-land.
While the Democratic Party is not a plantation, let’s talk some history since many Black people are not allowed to learn their real history on Massa GOP’s plantation.
All slaveowners did not treat their slaves the same.
On some plantations, slaves had a little more leeway because some slaveowners knew that beating their slaves to death would not be good for them financially.
How can a broken-down man do good work for them?
But as Solomon Northup said in his book 12 Years of Slave, some slaveowners were N-word breakers who would beat their slaves mercilessly for no reason.
On some plantations, Black people had no free time, no leisure time and no life outside of the fields.
While no situation is ideal, some Black people volunteered for the plantation that gives them no freedom, no voice and no life.
And because of them, none of us will have much of a voice or much freedom in the all-White Congress that will likely come because of the recent Supreme Court ruling.
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