Louisiana v. Callais: when the shelter we built won’t allow us in

Moments like this demand deeper and disciplined engagement anchored by historical memory, systemic analysis and civic engagement

The U.S. doesn’t stumble into its contradictions; it drives straight to them. 

There’s a difference between shock and surprise. When I was talking with a bestie recently, I learned one of her colleagues had been passed over for a well-deserved promotion, I was shocked the far more junior white woman had been chosen for the role, but I wasn’t surprised. It didn’t register as a horror; in fact, I expected it. Not a surprise. Reality confirmed what I already knew. That’s about how I’ve processed the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Louisiana v. Callais too: shocked but not surprised. There’s a certain exhaustion that comes from pattern recognition, whether it’s at your friend’s place of work or the ways white hegemony shows up in day-to-day life. This decision isn’t an anomaly; it’s a continuation of what we see over and over again. The U.S. doesn’t stumble into its contradictions; it depends on them. 

Here’s an uncomfortable offering for your consideration: Black struggle is a diagnostic tool for this country. Our struggles have long-since been the purgatory home between who the U.S. purports to be and who it is in reality. It’s virtually impossible to maintain a mythology of liberty while the economic, physical and political foundation of the country were erected by enslaved Africans. The contradiction is in the walls, joints, roof, nails and screws. The shelter we built won’t allow us in.

Reconstruction uncovered the limits of a commitment to a representative governance. Emancipation didn’t create a multiracial coalition for its advancement; there was temporary tolerance, if we’re being gracious in our description. As soon as Black political participation surfaced with a promise to change the material conditions of a greater number of Americans, so did white backlash. Jim Crow proved freedom without power is but fragile political theater. Legal emancipation is nothing in comparison to economic exclusion, disenfranchisement and ubiquitous threats of violence. The Civil Rights Movement announced the country (many Black folks and white folks alike) preferred order and the perception of peace and order over disruption for the sake of moral righteousness. Calls for patience and civility were quiet tools for preserving inequity. And still now, we see the constant scrimmage between justice and order in real time – democracy as aspiration and selective application.

Black folks aren’t incidental to this arrangement. We’re constantly situated between the evidence of democratic failure and the labor force tasked with repairing it. 

Lest we think this is only race-based, it’s imperative we bring racism’s kissing cousin, capitalism, to the discussion. Throughout history, Blackness has helped build the architecture through which exploitation was built, normalized, justified and expanded. Racialized and consumerized extraction spreads like a virus in a closed room. Any system that requires suffering to inch toward justice not only functions poorly but is consuming the very people is should be protecting, expecting them to nurse and repair maladies. That’s the logic of hyper-consumption. Extract, exhaust, expel, repeat. 

Capitalism depends on disposable populations and demands inequality to produce concentration. It also converts instability into profit, treating humans like inputs with value determined by usefulness. And so, the two are interconnected, with race being one of the most efficient organizing tools of capitalism. This braiding together – or two-strand twist, as it were – of capitalism and racism tie inequality to economic design. Where stratification is profitable, rights become negotiable under the slightest bit of pressure.   Where rights are negotiable, democracy is conditional.   With that, the 6-3 decision of the court for Louisiana v. Callais isn’t them going rogue, it’s them aligning with intentional design.   This brings us to the Black nationalist-turned-hyper-conservative justice, Clarence Thomas. Thomas is a quintessential symbol of skinfolk, vs. kinfolk, as we share identity while he actively, with every opinion he offers, participates in our constraint. This is why it must be taught and reiterated ad nauseum: Proximity to power does not equal transformation of it. 

In this context, though we acknowledge the complexity Thomas holds, what he represents gives us an opportunity to think about what it means when a system produces you, rewards you via elevation then uses you against the very communities from which you emerged. This system needs figures like Thomas because they provide the appearance of contradictions while maintaining the established arrangement. His presence yields the system an opportunity to say, “Look! Representation,” while resisting transformation.   Equally important to this is the fact that rewards are often highly individualized. When there are even a handful of exceptions, the narrative is about a fair, accessible system, and the exception is weaponized against the rule. Thomas-like figures are covers for policies and judicial philosophies that might otherwise be too recognizable as regressive and hostile. Representation itself is not enough. And real justice does away with the need for exceptions. 

This proves the pendulum swings we’ve seen (remember emancipation followed by Reconstruction) aren’t neutral at all. The swings between progress and regression aren’t balanced ones because there are people who absorb the impact of each swing. And progress that can be reversed isn’t progress at all. It’s temporary access. Furthermore, when Black people are continually positioned as both the evidence of democratic failure and the labor force expected to repair it, what we’re often too quick to call advancement is another form of abuse rooted in the tradition of slavery. We aren’t incidental to this country’s democratic experiment. Racialized extraction doesn’t stop where Black minds and bodies helped architect the country as our exploitation was normalized, justified and expanded just because a document – Emancipation Proclamation, Voting Rights Act, choose one – is signed.    This is why this moment can’t be understood only through race, party politics or even the court itself. What kind of system repeatedly needs inequality to stabilize itself, and why are surprised when it behaves accordingly?   A hallmark of a well-functioning democracy isn’t perfection. They’re built and maintained by people, after all. It does, however, require belief. Belief that participation matters, institutions can be reimagined and justice is possible. Pattern recognition has a way of eroding belief. As people see inequities reproduce themselves, disappointment stops feeling episodic and more cyclical and structural. While the shock may remain, surprise vanishes. Once surprise is gone, credibility fractures. People don’t disengage because they’re apathetic but because the cycle and contradictions have taught them what to expect. 

Still, clarity can’t become surrender. Moments like this demand deeper and disciplined engagement anchored by historical memory, systemic analysis and civic engagement. Our ever-evolving political education must be in concert with exercises in confrontation, disruption and accountability. Otherwise, we run the risk of believing representation is equal to power, access and transformation.