The Louisiana GOP's "Totally Not Racist" War on Black Citizens

In recent history, conservative Republicans and MAGA world have been telling us that people throw the word racist around too much. The country moved on after the Civil Rights Movement. Racism isn’t much of a problem anymore, and if anything, all this focus on race is the real discrimination. Reverse racism, they call it. Racism against white people. Saying you don’t see color sounds noble until you realize what it actually does. In a country built on racial inequality, willful blindness isn’t neutrality. It’s a shield for the people who benefit from keeping things exactly as they are.

So now, as they erase Black representation across the South, they insist it isn’t racist. It’s just partisan. And being partisan, the Supreme Court has already decided, is perfectly legal and constitutional. They are removing the little Black leadership we have, leadership that was already scarce, and telling us that’s not racism. So the question has to be asked. What is racism if not that? What would it have to look like before they’d call it what it is?

Photo credit Javier Gallegos, The Advocate. The only Black Congresspeople ever elected in Louisiana: U.S. Rep. Cleo Fields, former U.S. Rep. Cedric Richmond, former U.S. Rep. William Jefferson and U.S. Rep. Troy Carter, left to right.

The Supreme Court handed down its ruling in the Callais case, gutting what remained of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The conservative majority decided that drawing congressional districts to give Black voters proportional representation, in a state where Black people make up over 30% of the population, is itself discriminatory. Here’s what that actually means. The Court has said you can’t use race to protect Black voters, but you can use partisanship to hurt them. In Louisiana, where Black voters overwhelmingly vote Democratic, those two things are functionally the same. The Court has told Black voters that the remedy for discrimination is to vote for the party doing the discriminating. This will go down as one of the worst civil rights decisions in the history of this country.

This didn’t happen overnight. This was a plan, decades in the making. The people who fought the Voting Rights Act in 1965 never accepted it as settled. They built a machine. A billion-dollar legal and political operation chipping away at it court case by court case. Chief Justice John Roberts has been working toward this outcome since he was a young lawyer in the Reagan Justice Department. This ruling is the culmination of his career project.

Justice Kagan’s dissent lays out exactly how this works. States didn’t need open violence to take the Black vote away after Reconstruction. They used law. Poll taxes. Literacy tests. Good character exams. All facially race-neutral. All devastating. Louisiana took Black registered voters from 130,000 in 1896 down to 1,342 by 1904. Using laws that never once mentioned race. That’s the playbook. It has never changed. The Voting Rights Act was built to stop it. It worked. So states adapted again, cramming Black voters into as few districts as possible or splitting their communities so their votes are always swamped. You can still vote. Your vote just doesn’t count. There’s a phrase for that. Taxation without representation. It’s one of the reasons this country exists.

Since Reconstruction, Louisiana has sent over 171 white men to Congress. It wasn’t until 1991, 250 years into American history, that William Jefferson became the first Black person elected to Congress from Louisiana since Reconstruction. Only four Black people have ever held a congressional seat from this state. Four, in a state that is one third Black. And not a single Black candidate has ever been elected to statewide office. Not one. The Voting Rights Act is the only reason that changed at the congressional level. And now they are actively working to make sure it never happens again. With this ruling, roughly half of Black state legislators in Louisiana could lose their seats. Half of Black America lives in the South. Stripping Black people of representation here isn’t a regional issue. It is taking away the seat at the table for half of Black America.

This was a trap, set deliberately. I remember the 2021 redistricting roadshows. Republican lawmakers traveled the state, held hearings, pretended to listen. Black communities showed up demanding fair districts. They were ignored. Republicans drew maps giving Black voters only one of six congressional districts. Courts found the maps violated the Voting Rights Act and ordered a second majority-Black district drawn. Rather than comply, they ran to the Supreme Court to stop it. Gov. Jeff Landry and AG Liz Murrill filed eight pages arguing it was too close to the election to change the maps. The Supreme Court agreed. Louisiana ran the 2022 elections under maps a court had already found to be illegal. Two more years of stolen Black political power, bought with legal arguments they would later throw in the trash.

When courts finally forced a redraw in 2024, the legislative Black caucus brought maps that could have held up in court. They were dismissed. Republicans drew the new 6th District knowing it would be challenged, designed to take down Section 2 entirely. Three birds, one stone: stall with bad maps, gut the Voting Rights Act, and take out Garrett Graves, a Republican rival of Governor Landry. It worked. They bought four years. That was the plan. And Liz Murrill spent millions in Louisiana taxpayer dollars on outside right-wing lawyers for five straight years to make it happen. Not to build roads. Not to fund schools. Millions to make sure Black Louisianans had less representation. That’s where the money went.

This is why Louisiana is last in everything. Education. Poverty. Health outcomes. Infrastructure. Convince white working-class voters that government programs are just unfair handouts to Black people, cut the programs, and watch the money flow to tax cuts for the wealthy who fund the politicians running the dog whistle. It doesn’t just hurt Black Louisianans. It hollows out the entire state. Poor white families, rural communities, small towns, everyone pays the price. The race dog whistle is the most expensive con job in Louisiana history and we’ve been falling for it for 150 years.

What followed Reconstruction is a history most of us who grew up here were never shown. There is a book called “Without Sanctuary” that documents the Jim Crow era in photographs. Mutilated bodies. Public burnings. Much of this happened 60 to 100 years ago. Your grandparents’ lifetime. That terror left a mark that doesn’t disappear because we stopped putting it in the textbooks. That history never fully went away. It evolved. It learned to wear a suit and file briefs.

The Voting Rights Act didn’t fail. We failed to protect it. Our civil rights elders weren’t speaking in hyperbole when they said the work is never done. It didn’t feel urgent when they said it. It does now. The rights being stripped away right now were paid for in blood, and the people taking them are counting on us being too comfortable to fight the way our predecessors fought. We can’t afford to be.

Nobody is coming to save us. History doesn’t send reinforcements. We have to become them. The Deep South is not a lost cause. It is the key. Half of Black America lives here and we have been fighting alone and underfunded for 250 years while the rest of America watched. That has to change. We need organizers. We need resources. We need the rest of this country to recognize that Louisiana is the frontline, not a footnote.

Vote no on the constitutional amendments this weekend. Organize for the midterms and the 2027 Louisiana governor and legislative elections. Whoever controls this state in 2027 draws the maps after the 2030 census. This is the window. Rallies. Recalls. Precinct organizers. Revived local parties. Boycotts. Look hard at the corporations getting tax cuts from these politicians and funding them in return. Find out who they are. Shine a light on them. Hit them where it hurts. It has to be sustained, it has to grow, and it has to start now.

America cannot be fixed unless we fix it here first. We know that. We have always known that. As Benjamin Franklin said when everything was on the line, we must all hang together or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.

The old Louisiana isn’t back. It never left. But neither did we. Now let’s fight like it.

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677. This week, we talk to Dustin Granger about Louisiana politics. As a seasoned financial advisor with over two decades of experience, Dustin Granger has built his career helping Louisiana families navigate the turbulent waters of the Great Recession, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the recurring hurricanes that shape life on the Gulf Coast. A lifelong resident and LSU alumnus, Granger now serves as the Treasurer of the Louisiana Democratic Party. Granger is a leading voice for economic reform and climate resilience. He advocates for a “New Louisiana” that breaks away from traditional corporate-heavy investments to embrace renewable energy, fair taxation, and sustainable infrastructure. In this interview, we discuss his recommendations for the current voting season, his strategies for stabilizing property insurance, his commitment to strengthening the state’s middle class, and his ongoing work to revitalize the Democratic infrastructure across the Bayou State.

Click to listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or here

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Who’s running for Congress in 2026? Check out Jamie Davis (*Jamie is the state party endorsed candidate), Nick Albares & Gary Crockett running for U.S. Senate against Bill Cassidy, Conrad Cable (*state endorsed candidate) & Matt Gromlich against Speaker Mike Johnson (LA-4), Lauren Jewett (*state endorsed candidate) against Steve Scalise (LA-1), John Day (*state endorsed candidate), Tia Lebrun, and Caleb Walker against Clay Higgins (LA-3) and Rubia Garcia (*state endorsed candidate), Jessee Fleenor, Dan McKay & Larry Foy against Julia Letlow’s successor (LA-5). Re-elect Democrats Cleo Fields (LA-6) and Troy Carter (LA-2).