Nuance is important

The 1965 Voting Rights Act was good, actually

Recently, I got into a debate with another student about the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA). They tried to convince me that this bill was actually designed to suppress voters of color. Now on the face of it, this is a ridiculous statement. This bill was the crown jewel of the civil rights movement and according to some scholars was actually the bill which made the United States a democracy. Obviously, ending Jim Crow’s Black voters were not suppressed by the elimination of ‘literacy’ tests.

However, let’s have some nuance here. This bill was not without its flaws. One of the VRA’s impacts was the creation of majority-minority districts. These were thought of as a good idea at the time because they would guarantee Black voters complete control over some seats in Congress. To this day this is one of the few laws that regulate how Congressional districts may be drawn. You must include districts where minorities can be elected, which is responsible for some (although certainly not all) of the more peculiar district shapes you may have seen.

In recent years, however, this has begun to be criticized by academics and politicos alike. Packing minorities into majority minority districts inherently weakens their ability to impact more seats, and contributes to Democrats’ disadvantage in the House. These districts guarantee minority representatives, but also guarantee a lower efficiency of every minority vote. This of course is a tradeoff of sorts, but it isn’t a very good one.

From my knowledge this is the primary complaint about the VRA from the left. I assume this is also the other student’s reasoning for claiming it was written to suppress Black voters. However, a lack of nuance turned the conversation into a farce. This bill is flawed, and I agree that majority-minority districts are bad for our Democracy. But Jim Crow is obviously worse. There is no academic debate about whether the VRA was not “written” to silence Black voices. It was written to empower them. While the VRA failed in some regards its important to have nuance and keep things in perspective.

I write this post as a word of caution when making reactionary takes about politics. It can be easy to get caught in a wave of people saying nonsense which is why nuance and thoughtfulness is so key. This isn’t to say embrace centrism (the answer isn’t ‘both sides’), but rather think critically about where you stand, and what you are saying. Otherwise you’ll look rather silly.