Voting Rights Act

WSJ Hints Voting Rights Act Has Harmed Prospects of Blacks Holding Senate, Governor Seats
By Ken Shepherd | August 28, 2013 | 7:02 PM EDT

"Fifty years after Martin Luther King delivered his landmark 'I Have a Dream' speech at the Lincoln Memorial, which will be celebrated at a public ceremony Wednesday in Washington, African-American progress in the political arena has been spotty," Peter Nicholas and Neil King Jr. of the Wall Street Journal noted in a page A4 article on Wednesday headlined "Uneven Election Success for Black Politicians."

While the Journal staffers didn't explicitly make the connection, it turns out that an unintended consequence of the Voting Rights Act's majority-minority House districts has been to restrict the pool of black House candidates who are moderate enough to appeal to a statewide, much less nationwide electorate (emphases mine):

MSNBC Harris-Perry Claims We Are In 'Third Reconstruction' After Voting Rights Decision
By Nathan Roush | July 8, 2013 | 6:00 PM EDT

On her Sunday morning programming live from the Essence Festival in New Orleans, MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry, the namesake of her show, entertained a panel of African-American leaders to discuss several contemporary issues including the recent 5-4 decision handed down by the Supreme Court that declared Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional because it used, to quote Chief Justice Roberts, “a formula based on 40-year-old facts having no logical relation to the present day.” Harris-Perry scoffed at Roberts’ decision and claimed that this decision caused the advent of a “third reconstruction” in America. [Link to the audio here]

Clearly, this is a ridiculous comparison. The current social climate and culture of our country does not even hold a candle to the kind of suppression of rights that took place during Reconstruction or even during the civil rights movement, or so-called Second Reconstruction.

MSNBC's Chris Hayes: Demanding Government Be Colorblind is 'Adolescent'
By Ken Shepherd | March 1, 2013 | 6:26 PM EST

If the Supreme Court strikes down section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, it would be a "one of the most jaw-dropping acts of, you know, judicial activism activism that we've seen in probably a generation," MSNBC's Chris Hayes insisted on the March 1 edition of Now with Alex Wagner.

That line of argument is certainly debatable, but Hayes decided to go way off the deep end by then saying that the conservative jurists on the Court, particularly the chief justice and Antonin Scalia were devoted to an "adolescent" jurisprudence on issues of racial equality, because they, wait for it, believe that the law should be colorblind: