True Left

Participating in her second day of oral arguments on Tuesday, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson tangled with Alabama’s solicitor general in a case challenging Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which bars racial discrimination in voting policies.

The justices agreed to review a lower court’s opinion that found Alabama’s redrawn 2021 congressional map was likely a violation of the law because it includes only one majority Black district out of seven, despite the fact that Black voters account for 27% of the state’s voting population.
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In court Tuesday, Edmund LaCour, Alabama’s solicitor general, argued that the map was “race-neutral,” and that the order for a new map would put the state at odds with the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution because it would have to prioritize race in redistricting.

Jackson wondered why LaCour would make such a claim given that framers of the 14th Amendment — which guaranteed equal protection to all people, including former slaves — did not intend it to be “race-neutral or race-blind.”

“I don’t think we can assume that just because race is taken into account that that necessarily creates an equal protection problem,” Jackson said.

She said the framers themselves adopted the Equal Protection Clause “in a race-conscious way.”

“The entire point of the amendment was to secure rights of the freed former slaves,” Jackson said.

Jackson, the court’s newest justice and first Black woman ever to sit on its bench, then cited the Civil Rights Act of 1866, “which specifically stated that Black citizens would have the same civil rights as enjoyed by white citizens.”

“I don’t think that the historical record establishes that the founders believed that race neutrality or race blindness was required,” she said. “That’s the point of that act, to make sure that the other citizens, the Black citizens, would have the same [rights] as the white citizens.”

A case in point is the highly rated reality television program Big Brother, which airs on the CBS network Sundays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. The premise of the show is a contest between houseguests who are isolated from the outside world and who live together on set and are in full view of the television and live streaming audiences. The object of the game is to form alliances with other people and conspire to turn the majority of the household against one person, who is then evicted at the end of the week via a majority vote. The contestants compete in games to determine who will control nominations and those nominated for eviction are given the opportunity to remove themselves from the chopping block by competing in a veto competition. However, if unsuccessful at obtaining the power of veto, the nominated contestants must work to persuade the rest of the household guests to keep them, usually by offering to protect them from future nominations should they receive the head of household power. At the end of the series, contestants who were previously evicted will cast votes between the two remaining houseguests and elect the winner via majority decision.
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romances, referred to as "showmances" on the program between a handsome, physically fit young white male and a beautiful young white female have been a popular staple. Moreover, the biggest threats to win have, up until this season, been the athletic white male or the intelligent white woman
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However, the most salient and important change this year is that Big Brother has become a race-based contest between the nonwhites and the whites, and the nonwhites are winning. The strategy chosen by the nonwhites has been to form a secret alliance against the whites and to stick together no matter the circumstances to ensure a person of colour wins the contest this year.
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For those who watch the program on television, each episode is highly edited and appears as a mix of live and taped scenes. Right from the early episodes of this season, the producers presented clips showing that the nonwhites had immediately formed an alliance against the whites to whom they were openly resentful for their past successes on the program and for not having lived the non-white experience in America. Whites have inherited white privilege. In contrast, the white houseguests have been portrayed as consistently playing the game using the past tried and true strategies of forming partnerships with others, preparing for contests, and promising to keep their word. Yet the numbers have been against them and one by one white contestants have been voted off the show while the nonwhites openly celebrate and discuss the effectiveness of their strategy.

With any luck, the success of this season’s Big Brother may be the start of a serious trend of reality television shows that inadvertently help raise white racial consciousness by showing the extent that average nonwhites are dedicated to promoting and protecting their racial interests above all else

the show, which has been rocked by charges of racism and cultural insensitivity since its premiere in 2000, would finally crown its first Black winner.
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In an email to The Times, Chen Moonves wrote that she and her Chinese American cousins felt that the Cookout’s success this season was “also a win for us, as Chinese Americans, as fellow people of color. ... We are celebrating what the Cookout has accomplished.” She added that she felt this season of “Big Brother” “could be a case study to be looked at and discussed in all schools starting as early as 4th grade on up … to look at the issue of race.”

Black contestants in the past complained of being outnumbered, bullied and mistreated by white houseguests.

"It's people who have never had this opportunity before banding together to do what the white houseguests have been doing for years."

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“This is not about pitting one diversity group against another. So I’m happy to vote for a Hispanic, a Black person, an LGBTQ person, an AAPI person. I’d just like to see more diversity representation,” Hirono said.

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And our enemies respond with:

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    I’m not exactly sure how adding more Hispanic, black, and LGBTQ candidates help get more Asian Americans involved, but there you have it.

It's NOT ABOUT getting more "Asians" in! It seems our enemies are too primitive to wrap their heads around this idea: that anti-racism is not about benefiting one's own ethnic group. Indeed, we would even be willing to a take a hit to our own ethnic group for the sake of anti-racism. For example, if there was currently two "white" (including Jewish) nominees and one "AAPI" nominee and we could change it to three "black" nominees, we would do so without hesitation. Or if there were currently two "white" (including Jewish) nominees and one "black" nominee and we could change it to three "AAPI" nominees, we would do that too. This is what true anti-racist solidarity looks like. Nothing in anti-racism is about self-interest. Everything in anti-racism is about doing whatever it takes to destroy the enemy, including hurting our own ethnic group if necessary.

So long as we hold to this fundamental principle, our enemies will not succeed in tempting us to put self-interest before anti-racism as they are already trying to do with articles like this one:

https://www.amren.com/blog/2021/03/blacks-wont-be-better-off-when-whites-are-a-minority/

WE DON'T MIND NOT BEING BETTER OFF. WE ONLY CARE ABOUT MAKING YOU WORSE OFF.