Alito wrote of the VRA being “perverted” for partisan purposes, but I can’t think of a greater perversion of the VRA than concluding that it is acceptable for white people to try to disenfranchise Black voters for political advantage. It defeats the entire purpose for which the VRA was adopted, which was to end the deliberate and systematic disenfranchisement of Black people then prevalent throughout the United States, and to prevent such racial discrimination from ever occurring against anyone.

The Roberts Court is creating a world in which the federal government does not interfere with the right of white Americans to dominate those they see as their lessers; as Kilpatrick once observed, that is the “whole basis” of their cramped vision of liberty. They can call this color-blindness all they like, but we can see what it really is.