by J. Pharoah Doss
If the term “fearmongering” means “deliberately arousing public fear about a particular issue,” then “fearmongering 2.0” is “deliberately arousing public fear as a desperation tactic.” The distinction between the two is that fearmongering exaggerates a valid issue, whereas fearmongering 2.0 instills fear about an unfounded one.
In Shelby County v. Holder (2013), the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Section 4(b) of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which required states and localities with a history of racial discrimination to obtain federal approval or “preclearance” before changing voting laws or procedures.
It’s vital to remember that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 included both permanent and temporary provisions. Certain provisions were scheduled to expire due to expected racial improvement. The assumption was that decades of racial progress would eventually render those provisions obsolete, but if intentional racial discrimination in voting was found to persist, Congress could extend the provisions that were set to expire. Civil rights advocates chose to deny racial progress in order to demonstrate that racial discrimination would persist indefinitely to extend the temporary provisions.
The Court decided that Section 4(b) of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was unconstitutional because the formula was based on outdated data and no longer reflected current conditions, thereby violating the principles of federalism and state autonomy. In other words, states cannot be permanently punished for past discrimination once racial progress has been made.
Civil rights groups argued that the Shelby decision represented a “step back toward Jim Crow,” referring to a period when Black people were prohibited from voting because of poll taxes, literacy tests, and various other restrictions. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 eliminated Jim Crow restrictions that prevented Blacks from voting.
Following the Shelby decision, the NAACP stated that federal “preclearance” was a critical tool in preventing the resurgence of Jim Crow-era restrictions, and the Supreme Court has recently allowed states to reinstate discriminatory practices under the guise of race-neutral laws that will be systematically designed to make it more difficult for Blacks to vote.
Civil rights advocates told Black voters that the Supreme Court’s decision permitted the suppression of the Black vote through photo ID laws and reduced early voting.
Photo ID laws and reduced early voting may have inconvenienced Black voters but suggesting that they were equivalent to poll taxes and literacy tests, which prevented Blacks from voting, was fearmongering 2.0.
Although Black voter turnout did not dramatically drop due to voter suppression as predicted, civil rights groups still maintained that states were reverting to Jim Crow 2.0 to disenfranchise Black Americans.
The U.S. Supreme Court recently struck down a congressional map in Louisiana v. Callais.
The Supreme Court found the map an illegal racial gerrymander based too heavily on race. According to ABC, the Supreme Court reversed a lower court’s decision that said Louisiana’s map, drawn after the 2020 census, violated the Voting Rights Act of 1965 because only one of six districts was majority Black while more than a third of the state’s voting-age population was Black. The lower court ordered Louisiana to add a second majority-Black district, a process that overtly relied on race.
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito said, “In considering whether the Constitution permits the intentional use of race to comply with the Voting Rights Act, we start with the general rule that the Constitution almost never permits the Federal Government or a State to discriminate on the basis of race.” As a result, the Supreme Court affirmed the Fifteenth Amendment and the original intent of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Even if some majority-Black districts disappear, it does not follow that Black candidates will be unable to win elections in non-majority-Black districts or that Black voters will lack representation or face Jim Crow 2.0. However, fearmongering 2.0 began immediately following the Supreme Court’s decision.
The NAACP’s president and CEO, Derrick Johnson, declared that the Supreme Court “betrayed Black voters; they betrayed America and our democracy.” He referred to the verdict as a grave setback for our country because it threatens to undermine hard-won victories for which Black people died.
Then he made a contradictory statement: “Our best defense and offense is the ballot box, and we’re going to turn out voters in the midterm elections to make sure we can elect representatives who look out for us. “ But how can that be if the Supreme Court just dealt, as he put it, “a devastating blow to what remains of the Voting Rights Act”?
Cliff Albright, co-founder of the group Black Voters Matter, stated that the Supreme Court’s decision “is literately throwing us back to the Jim Crow era unapologetically, and that’s not exaggeration.”
He’s right; it’s not exaggeration. It’s fearmongering 2.0.