America is still feeling the aftershocks of the Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais, in which conservative justices voted to severely limit the enforcement of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. While some argued that civil rights era protections were no longer needed, many Southern state legislators responded to the decision by redrawing their maps to reduce or fully eliminate Black political power. Within a few hours of the decision, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis drafted a map that, according to the Pensacola News Journal, would redistribute minority voters in Central and South Florida from “districts where they could assert some influence into neighboring ones where they are overwhelmed by white voters, a process experts call cracking.” If Black political power were ceramic, we’d see numerous shards scattered across the floor.

On May 7th, Tennessee Republicans approved a new map that eliminated the state’s only majority-Black district, which included Memphis. When the Supreme Court vacated a lower court decision in Allen v. Milligan, it cleared the way for Alabama legislators to eliminate one of two largely Black congressional districts before this year’s midterm elections. Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry declared a state of emergency to postpone the state’s congressional primary races. In Democracy Docket, Jacob Knutson suggested that Republicans in the state want to “draw a new map to eliminate one or both of the state’s two Democratic-led majority-minority districts.” When asked about the state discarding approximately 45,000 votes cast before the Supreme Court ruling, Gov. Landry responded dismissively, saying it was “not a big deal” and not his fault. Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves called for a special session for redistricting that could eliminate the state’s predominantly Black districts (Harrison, 2026).

Many have protested efforts to disenfranchise Black southerners. A prominent example is Tennessee Representative Justin Jones (D-Nashville), who burned a printed image of the Confederate flag inside the state capital in opposition to redistricting efforts, explaining that “the neo-Confederate caucus that assembled yesterday was defeated once and will be defeated again.” Jones also compared “Republicans to the Ku Klux Klan,” calling them the “white sheet caucus,” due to their efforts to limit Black political power. A photo by Nicole Hester, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, shows Justin J. Pearson, a Black Tennessee state representative, standing nose-to-nose with the House Sergeant at Arms, after being denied entry to a committee meeting where his White colleagues were discussing eliminating the district he represented. Protests across the country over the past few weeks are reminiscent of the resistance that arose throughout the 1950s and 60s.

America is not as far removed from its racist past as some assume. Indeed, there are ideological parallels between then and now. For example, when the state of Texas, the Lone Star State, seceded from the Union in February 1861, representatives complained that free states “demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and negro races,” and bemoaned the growing popularity of the abolition movement. White southerners saw the prohibition of slavery as a slight against them rather than a necessary step toward justice for enslaved Black people. This is similar to White people in the modern era who claim they are victimized by diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs designed to level the playing field.

For instance, President Trump suggested the Civil Rights Act of 1964 led to “reverse racism” against white people, despite this nation’s legacy of racial segregation and discrimination against Black people. Gov. DeSantis, another prominent Republican, suggested that white males were a “disfavored group” who he believed were discriminated against, without any mention of the racism Black people continue to endure (Olivares, 2026). Alabama House Speaker Nathaniel Ledbetter said he hoped “that the Supreme Court will overturn Amendment 14,” which established birthright citizenship and the Equal Protection Clause. While he later claimed his statements were taken out of context, it’s hard to imagine any scenario in which these words wouldn’t shake the foundations of our Constitutional Republic.

Scholars William Darity Jr. and A. Kristen Mullen explained in From Here to Equality that after the Civil War, “the nation paid the price demanded by southern whites for reconciliation: the renewed subjugation of blacks.” Removing federal troops from the South paved the way for the Jim Crow regime to take hold. While the 15th Amendment guaranteed Black men the right to vote and the 19th Amendment later extended those rights to women, southern states implemented discriminatory legislation and policies, such as poll taxes, grandfather clauses, and literacy tests. Combined with a violent intimidation campaign carried out by groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, these measures diminished Black political power. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was needed because Southern states systematically discriminated against Black citizens. While this federal legislation helped address discriminatory voting laws and policies, it didn’t vanquish racism within our political process, as some believe. Racial gerrymandering in the modern era demonstrates this point.

The old southern strategy attempted to win over or appeal to white southern voters, often through racist dog whistles. In Lee Atwater’s infamous 1981 interview, he explained, “You start in 1954 by saying ‘N*****, n*****, n*****. By 1968, you can’t say n***** — that hurts you. Backfires. So, you say stuff like ‘forced busing,’ ‘states’ rights,’ and all that. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes…a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.” His statement reveals how the southern strategy was initially used to allude to a set of racialized policies without mentioning those groups. But in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s decision, which weakened the protections of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a new southern strategy, or at least a new phase, has emerged. The lost cause is no longer lost, and as a result, White southerners no longer have to rely on dog whistles. They’ve amassed enough power to enact their true goal — limiting Black political power.