Supreme Court Conservatives Are Tired of Hearing About Racism. Guess What? Me Too.

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White America is tired of racism.

They’re not tired of being racist, mind you. But they’re certainly tired of hearing about it. Tired of having to think about it. Tired of being told that systems built by white people to oppress everyone else are still doing exactly what they were designed to do.

They’re so tired of racism, in fact, that many have convinced themselves that the real racism is racism against white people.

And the Supreme Court? They’re tired, too—tired of pretending they have to care. They’re tired of race-based remedies to systemic racism and are looking for a way out.

That’s why the Court is poised to rule in a case called Louisiana v. Callais that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act must be unconstitutional if compliance requires race-conscious remedies. This is the only part of the law with any teeth left, and it requires efforts like, say, looking at where Black people actually live when drawing congressional maps.

If that sounds ridiculous, that’s because it is.

The case that could kill Section 2

Listening to oral arguments in Callais on Oct. 15 was infuriating. The Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965 to make the 15th Amendment, which had been ratified in 1870, mean something. It was meant to stop states from doing exactly what they’re still doing: finding creative new ways to keep Black people from voting.

Callais is basically a rerun of Allen v. Milligan, a 2023 case where Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined the liberals in ruling that Alabama’s racist electoral map violated Section 2 and agreeing with a lower court that a second majority-Black district was required.

(Read more: You Can Blame John Roberts for Our Country’s Legal Shitshow)

Louisiana did the same thing as Alabama—cracked and packed Black voters until a lower court made them draw a second-majority Black district. That should have been the end of it.

So why is the Court revisiting this issue? Because the conservatives on this Court can’t stand the idea that anti-racism doesn’t come with an expiration date. They’ve decided that the real question isn’t whether Black voters are being disenfranchised; it’s whether fixing that disenfranchisement might hurt white feelings.

That’s the shift: Acknowledging race to undo racism now counts as racism. In their world, taking race into account to make things fair is somehow worse than centuries of using race to keep things unequal.

The Kavanaugh clock

Enter Brett “Let’s Wrap Up Racism” Kavanaugh.

Kavanaugh has been itching to put an expiration date on anti-racism. In his concurrence in Milligan, Kavanaugh basically said, ‘Sure, fine, we’ll let you fix racism for now, but don’t take too long. We can’t keep this up forever.’

”The authority to conduct race-based redistricting cannot extend indefinitely into the future,” he wrote, paraphrasing Justice Clarence Thomas—another surefire vote to gut Section 2.

Now, in Callais, Kavanaugh is asking the question point-blank: When can we stop caring about racism? During oral arguments, Kavanaugh mused about how long race-conscious remedies have been allowed. “Decades,” he said as if this country has been attacking racism since forever.

“[T]his Court’s cases in a variety of contexts have said that race-based remedies are permissible for a period of time, sometimes for a long period of time, decades in some cases, but that they should not be indefinite and should have an end point,” Kavanaugh said, before asking, “And what exactly do you think the end point should be?”

Translation: How long must we keep doing this anti-racism thing? How long before Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act can finally be sunsetted?

I’ll tell you Brett: 334 years. If that’s really what we’re doing—if we’re setting a timer on Black liberation—then let’s do the math.

The math

Two hundred forty-six years of slavery.

Eighty-eight years of Jim Crow.

That’s 334 years of state-sanctioned white supremacy in the United States—of laws, policies, and violence designed to keep Black people from voting, owning property, and even looking at white people the wrong way.

(Read more: White People’s Performative Ignorance Is Exhausting—Opinion)

So, fine. If we’re putting the Voting Rights Act on a clock, then it should stay in place for at least 334 years. That means the Court can sunset Section 2 in the year 2299.

Until then, Justice Kanavaugh, kindly shut the hell up with the insinuation that race-conscious remedies need an expiration date.

Post-racial, my Black ass

The Supreme Court has been building toward this moment for over a decade. Callais is the sequel to Shelby County v. Holder, the 2013 case that saw Roberts take a big swing at the Voting Rights Act. Roberts wrote a majority decision gutting Sections 4 and 5 of the Voting Rights Act—the parts that required states with long histories of racism to get federal approval before changing their voting laws—because, as he claimed, “things have changed dramatically.”

“Our country has changed,” Roberts wrote. “And while any racial discrimination in voting is too much, Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes to remedy that problem speaks to current conditions.” He also said that “blatantly discriminatory evasions of federal decrees are rare.”

Almost immediately, that turned out to be false.

Within days of the Shelby decision, Texas, Mississippi, and Alabama announced plans to enforce strict voter ID laws previously blocked under preclearance. The Alabama, Texas, and Mississippi laws remain on the books. North Carolina passed a voter ID law that the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in 2016 held targeted “African Americans with almost surgical precision.” (That law remains blocked.)

It was as if Southern states heard Roberts’ ‘racism is over’ pablum, muttered to themselves, ‘The fuck it is,’ and then went out and enacted the most racist voter ID laws they could imagine.

Now in Callais, Roberts and his conservative cronies are coming for what’s left of the Voting Rights Act. They’ve moved from “racism is over” to “fixing racism is racist.” It’s the same logic dressed up in new robes—white ones.

Quit stealing our time

You want to talk about time? Let’s talk about all of the time that white America has stolen from Black Americans and never compensated for.

Our time has always been subject to the whims of White America.

They stole it when they kidnapped us from Africa and dragged us here in chains. They stole it through centuries of forced labor. They stole it with poll taxes and literacy tests and lynch mobs.

And they’re still stealing it: It takes Black people in Georgia six hours to vote, while Chad McWhiteman waltzes in and out of his white community’s polling booth in 15 minutes. They steal the time it takes to psych ourselves up before walking into a boardroom, conference room, or classroom, wondering how much racism we’ll have to absorb before lunch.

They steal the time it takes to explain racism to people who pretend not to see it. They steal the time it takes to litigate these cases over and over again, decade after decade, because the Supreme Court keeps moving the goalposts.

And now they want to set a timer on our liberation, too.

When Kavanaugh complains that it’s been “decades,” he’s not wrong—it has been decades since the Voting Rights Act passed. Six to be exact. But decades aren’t justice. Decades are a mere blip in the lifespan of white supremacy.

Two-hundred-and-forty-six years of slavery, and you’re complaining about “decades?” Bitch, please.

Come talk to me in 2299

So if Brett Kavanaugh wants to talk about time, then let’s talk about it. If John Roberts wants to pretend we’ve outgrown racism, then let him prove it.

Otherwise, until we’ve had 334 years without state-sanctioned inequality, white America doesn’t get to declare the work done. You don’t get to gut the Voting Rights Act because you’re bored of racism. You don’t get to be over it. You don’t get to be tired of talking about it when you’re the reason we still have to. (And let’s be clear, 334 years without oppression still isn’t 334 years of freedom.)

But still, I’ll give you 334 years. That means you can sunset Section 2 in 2299. Hell, sunset the entire Civil Rights Act, since that’s what conservatives are obviously so keen on. But not until 2299.

Until then, keep your countdown clocks to yourself.

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