Because this country likes to forget what it’s capable of, I take it as a duty to remind us. We sit at the brink of the largest decimation of Black political power since the fall of Reconstruction — a Second Redemption. And the end of Black political power means the end of democracy itself.

I say as much in the interview. But it is also important to note that it is not solely about Black rights.

This is what Du Bois meant when he said Black America stepped briefly into the sun and then fell under the veil.

I agree. The idea that “the South” gets what it deserves erases the millions whose votes are cast against this or diluted through gerrymandering.

I am not being hyperbolic. Our insistence on segregating our histories, in encapsulating the struggle for voting/civil rights as a Black struggle and not an American one, has helped bring us to this moment. We did not have representative democracy until 1965. W/o the VRA, it is unlikely to survive.

We must understand that the Voting Rights Act was not merely about ensuring Black Americans rights, it was about democratizing America. This ruling is not just a decimation of Black rights and Black Americans’ ability to have representation, it is a fatal blow to multiracial democracy.

I say it again and again: Because we don’t learn the real history of this country, we do not understand what this country is capable of. After 1870, 22 Black men served in Congress. By 1901, because of racist SCOTUS rulings, electoral coups and election cheating and violence, there were none.

There are people still living who fought — and watched their compatriots be murdered — for the passage of this act and to attempt to democratize America. To see it completed felled in the span of their OWN lifetime is just absolutely devastating.

And to be clear, in case it’s not, democracy cannot and will not exist without these protections. We already see a South so heavily gerrymandered that numerical majorities cannot win elections and where a minority holds supermajorities in state legislatures.

Folks will try to parse language around this, using words such as “limits” the VRA or “diminishes” the VRA, but the acts most potent tools for ensuring Black representation or that Black people can pick their representation have been eliminated.

We must understand the racist political rhetoric, the erasure and attacks on Black history, the reinstalling of Confederate names and monuments, all go hand-in-hand as the Court and Congress legitimize the taking of political rights and the end of multiracial democracy itself.

The Voting Rights Act is essentially dead and it’s quite possible that we will, like when a similar SCOTUS gutted civil rights at the fall of Reconstruction, see a disappearance of much of the Black congressional representation, especially in the most heavily Black states, which are in the South.

This is a modern-day Lost Cause campaign to once again white-wash our origin story, erase the true history of the myriad of people who helped build this nation, justify genocide/ slavery by painting an idyllic, racist portrait of an America that never was. You do so to justify the horrors to come.

Y’all think these are dance moves when they really are tactical maneuvers for when they are deployed to suppress us. But keep thinking it’s cute to watch how deftly robots dance.

I agree that rights are politicized in this country. I’m saying it is not politics for a person to desire equality.

Yes. All politics are identity politics. But wanting to be treated with equality is not politics.

It’s not “identity politics” to not want to be denied equality or mistreated because of your identity. In case anyone was wondering.