Congress must act to correct the Supreme Court's many
wrongs.
By Julian Bond
The racial picture in
America has improved remarkably in my lifetime, so much so that a black man has
been elected and re-elected President of the United States — an unthinkable
development just a few years ago.
But paradoxically,
Barack Obama’s victory in 2008 convinced many that all racial barriers and
restrictions had been vanquished and we had entered racial nirvana across the
land.
This was just one of
the many unfair burdens placed on Obama’s presidency. We knew that his victory
didn’t herald a post-civil rights America or mean that race had been
vanquished. It couldn’t eliminate structural inequity or racist attitudes.
The truth is that Jim
Crow may be dead, but racism is alive and well. That’s the central fact of life
for every non-white American, including the President of the United States. It
eclipses income, position, and education. Race trumps them all.
Our first order of
business now needs to be demanding that Congress reformulate the pre-clearance
requirement of the Voting Rights Act, which the Supreme Court has just
invalidated.
Like the Court’s
affirmative action ruling the day before, the voting rights decision could have
been worse.
But we can’t live with
“it could have been worse,” especially when it comes to voting. We must insist
on “it has to be the best.”
This ruling was
devious and perverse.
It was devious because
the Court’s majority used Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act to effectively end
Section 5, essentially voiding the federal government’s ability to guarantee
minority access to the polls. At the same time, the ruling sidestepped the
court’s historic deference to Congress and blamed lawmakers for not updating
the formula.
It was perverse
because these justices cited the fact that large numbers of blacks voted in
2012 as a reason to take away the law that allowed them to vote.
Today, we have much
more to work with and we take heart that so much has changed. The changes that
have come have everything to do with the work of the modern movement for civil
rights.
There needs to be a
constantly growing and always reviving activist movement across America if we
are going to maintain and expand victories and our vision for the country.
We must not forget
that Martin Luther King, Jr. stood before and with thousands — the people who made
the mighty movement what it was.
From Jamestown’s slave
pens to Montgomery’s boycotted buses, these ordinary men and women labored in
obscurity. From Montgomery forward they provided the foot soldiers of the
freedom army. They shared, with King, “an abiding faith in America.”
They walked in
dignity, rather than ride in shame. They faced bombs in Birmingham and mobs in
Mississippi. They sat down at lunch counters so others could stand up. They
marched and they organized.
King didn’t march from
Selma to Montgomery by himself. He didn’t speak to an empty field at the March
on Washington.
There were thousands
marching with him, and before him, and thousands more who did the dirty work
that preceded the triumphal march.
The successful
strategies of the modern movement for civil rights were litigation,
organization, mobilization, and coalition, all aimed at creating a national
constituency for civil rights. Sometimes the simplest of deeds — sitting at a
lunch counter, going to a new school, applying for a marriage license, casting
a vote — can challenge the way we think and act.
Racial justice,
economic equality, and world peace — these were the themes that occupied King’s
life. They ought to occupy ours today.
We have a long and
honorable tradition of social justice in this country. It still sends forth the
message that when we act together we can overcome.
A first order of
business might be gathering in Washington on August 24 to commemorate the 1963 March on Washington and to demand that Congress act to
correct the Supreme Court’s many wrongs.
Julian Bond was Chairman of the NAACP Board of Directors from
February 1998 until February 2010 and is now Chairman Emeritus. He is a
Distinguished Scholar in the School of Government at American University in
Washington, DC, and a Professor Emeritus in History at the University of
Virginia.