> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://libertys-lens.ghost.io/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # The Myth of Colorblindness at the Supreme Court - URL: https://libertys-lens.ghost.io/the-myth-of-colorblindness-at-the/ - Published: 2026-05-11T00:24:47.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-13T16:48:39.000Z - Description: How the Court protects inequality by refusing to see it - Author: Graham Baughman - Tags: Newsletter, #Migrated-1786639647847, #Import 2026-08-13 16:47 [Subscribe](#/portal/signup) ### Colorblindness Isn’t Progress. It’s Strategy. Reactionary colorblindness is seeing a real resurgence, with its tenets now finding their way into jurisprudence at the highest levels. In its recent ruling in [*Louisiana v. Callais*](https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/louisiana-v-callais?ref=libertys-lens.ghost.io), the Supreme Court’s conservative majority held that courts must be colorblind in their consideration of outcomes, sharply restricting the application of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act to questions of motive alone. It is no longer sufficient to demonstrate that racial disparities in voting power or voting access exist as a result. Plaintiffs must now present strong evidence of present‑day intentional racial discrimination regarding voting. The Court further declared that “discrimination that occurred some time ago, as well as present‑day disparities that are characterized as the ongoing ‘effects of societal discrimination,’ are entitled to much less weight.” Racial disparities, so long as they cannot be traced to provable, contemporary intent, are therefore permissible in the majority’s view. But government adoption of neutral policy requires the existence of a neutral society. Seeing the glee with which lawmakers strip away Black representation the very moment obstacles to doing so are removed makes clear that our society is not neutral on the question of race. The Court’s embrace of colorblind doctrine does not make our system colorblind; it simply prevents the government from addressing real‑world harms that continue to fall along racial lines. Proponents of this approach insist that colorblindness is the only path toward a post‑racial society. Chief Justice Roberts has framed it this way for years: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race”—a formulation that treats recognition of racially disparate outcomes as the problem itself. History suggests something very different. These unequal outcomes are not accidental; they are the predictable result of colorblindness. Stripping the state of the ability to respond to racial harm does not dissolve racial hierarchy. It entrenches it, while insulating those outcomes from scrutiny. --- **Liberty’s Lens is entirely reader‑supported.** We don’t answer to corporate masters deciding what we say or what we cover. If you find our work valuable, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription. You can take **20% off with** [**this coupon**](#/portal/signup) — and support independent media for about the price of a coffee per month. [Get 20% off forever](#/portal/signup) You can also gift a paid subscription to a friend who’d appreciate what we do. Thank you to every reader who shares our work and helps it reach new audiences. We couldn’t do this without you. We love you all. --- ### Reactionary Colorblindness in Practice Reactionary colorblindness is not a neutral principle; it is an ideology long used to attack race‑conscious remedies like affirmative action. It insists that any use of race by the government—even to remedy inequality—is itself a form of unconstitutional discrimination. Under this framework, racial disparities are not evidence of racism unless plaintiffs can prove direct, present‑day malice. Structural inequality, historical exclusion, and systemic outcomes are treated as legally irrelevant. Sound familiar? This logic sits at the heart of *Louisiana v. Callais*. When [the Supreme Court held](https://afj.org/article/the-supreme-courts-overturning-of-the-voting-rights-act-is-complete/?ref=libertys-lens.ghost.io) that the state’s intentional use of race to draw a second majority‑Black district constituted an unconstitutional racial gerrymander, it was not rejecting discrimination—it was rejecting a race‑conscious remedy. When the Court demanded that future plaintiffs seeking relief under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act provide evidence of intent to discriminate, it was not narrowing doctrine. It was shielding an existing system of inequality from legal challenge. Reactionary colorblindness rests on a [claimed moral and constitutional equivalence](https://www.stanfordlawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2010/04/lopez.pdf?ref=libertys-lens.ghost.io) between laws designed to subjugate racial groups—Jim Crow, racial zoning, poll taxes—and laws designed to remediate their effects, such as voting rights protections or diversity programs. It prioritizes “race‑neutral individuality,” framing collective racial redress as an unfair disadvantage to white individuals, while recognizing racism only when it is explicit, personal, and provable. You can see traces of this framework throughout the majority opinion in *Callais* and in its conservative defense. But this way of thinking did not originate with the Roberts Court. It was developed deliberately, refined strategically, and adopted because it could preserve racial hierarchies without defending them explicitly. To understand how colorblindness became such an effective shield, you have to go back to one of its earliest and most explicit architects. [Buy me a coffee!](https://donate.stripe.com/5kQ5kF0iLfTD2ihcPxeIw02?ref=libertys-lens.ghost.io) --- ### How “Colorblindness” Became the Safe Language of White Supremacy To understand what is driving this agenda, it helps to [examine its origins](https://s-usih.org/2013/06/a-history-of-color-blindness-and-memory-of-civil-rights/?ref=libertys-lens.ghost.io). James Jackson Kilpatrick stands as a foundational figure in the development and popularization of what would later be called reactionary colorblindness. In the 1950s, as editor of the *Richmond News Leader*, Kilpatrick [was a leading advocate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James%5FJ.%5FKilpatrick?ref=libertys-lens.ghost.io) of “massive resistance” to *Brown v. Board of Education*. He championed the legal theory of interposition, arguing that states could lawfully defy federal desegregation orders. By the late 1960s and 1970s, however, overt defenses of segregation had become politically untenable. Rather than abandon his objectives, Kilpatrick rebranded them. He began appropriating the language of the civil rights movement itself—most notably the ideal of judging individuals by “merit” rather than race—to attack affirmative action, busing, and other race‑conscious remedies. Scholars such as [William Hustwit](https://academic.oup.com/ahr/article-abstract/119/1/206/20446?ref=libertys-lens.ghost.io) have argued that Kilpatrick deliberately distorted the words of leaders like Martin Luther King Jr., [reframing colorblindness](https://rooseveltinstitute.org/blog/a-jurisprudential-reckoning-how-conservatives-use-colorblind-ideology-to-obstruct-racial-justice/?ref=libertys-lens.ghost.io) as an American moral ideal while insisting that any policy acknowledging race, even to remedy past harm, was unconstitutional. Through a nationally syndicated column and frequent television appearances, including on *60 Minutes*’ “Point–Counterpoint,” Kilpatrick helped mainstream this reframing, providing a respectable intellectual vocabulary for opposing racial justice policies without defending segregation outright. This turn toward colorblindness was not the product of a moral reckoning. It was mercenary. Kilpatrick’s underlying commitments did not change. What changed was his assessment of what could still be defended in public. By embracing reactionary colorblindness—the claim that attempts to remedy racism are themselves racist—he found a safer way to pursue the same ends: preserving de facto segregation and racial hierarchy without relying on explicitly discriminatory laws or rhetoric. The rhetoric changed to obscure the intent. The intended outcome never changed. --- ### When Strategy Becomes Power That framing matters because it maps cleanly onto how the modern Court approaches voting rights. Under this view, the state is treated as oppressive when it interferes with the right to discriminate, while liberty is said to be respected when discrimination is permitted. The liberty to discriminate is treated as real and constitutionally protected, while the liberty not to be discriminated against is dismissed as artificial—something imposed by foolish liberals during Reconstruction or the civil rights era. This logic runs straight through Justice [Alito’s reasoning](https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-supreme-courts-callais-decisions-undermine-the-voting-rights-act-and-sow-election-chaos/?ref=libertys-lens.ghost.io) in *Callais*. Because race and partisanship are said to be inseparable—and because partisanship is permissible—the racial consequences are excused. Under this framework, it is not racist to redistrict Black voters, disenfranchise them, or draw districts that deliberately waste their votes, so long as the action can be described as partisan. That reasoning would have been incomprehensible to the framers of the [Fifteenth Amendment](https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/promise-and-pitfalls-15th-amendment-over-150-years?ref=libertys-lens.ghost.io). Those framers were partisan Republicans who understood exactly what they were confronting: Democrats disenfranchising Black Americans in order to destroy the Republican Party in the South. Race and partisanship were inseparable at the moment the Amendment was adopted. The idea that partisan motivation would somehow negate constitutional protections would have struck them as insane. In what other context would Black Americans be disenfranchised if not a partisan one? That is precisely why the Amendment exists. When this doctrine is put into practice, the results are immediate and unmistakable. What once appeared as cultural change was, in reality, legal restraint. [The Court’s determination](https://eji.org/news/supreme-court-undermines-black-political-participation-in-devastating-ruling-on-voting-rights-act/?ref=libertys-lens.ghost.io) that the Voting Rights Act’s protections were obsolete did not eliminate racial politics; it eliminated the barriers to acting on them. Once those restraints were removed, the underlying dynamics reasserted themselves. Republican states moved with speed. Tennessee offers one of the clearest examples. Lawmakers divided Shelby County, home to Memphis, into [three congressional districts](https://www.actionnews5.com/2026/05/08/tennessee-gop-approves-congressional-map-dividing-memphis-diluting-black-vote/?ref=libertys-lens.ghost.io) and distributed Black voters across them to dilute their political power as thoroughly as possible. The result was a map designed to advantage Republicans by dispersing Black voters across multiple districts—a party whose congressional delegation has historically included [vanishingly few Black members](https://marylandmatters.org/2025/01/03/congressional-black-caucus-marks-historic-firsts-as-it-membership-hits-record/?ref=libertys-lens.ghost.io). Dilution did not just change partisan control; it sharply reduced the likelihood that Black voters would ever again elect representatives drawn from their own communities. During debate, a Black representative asked a simple question: Memphis is a predominantly African‑American city, correct? The [response from leadership](https://www.instagram.com/reel/DYBV2HrORcj/?ref=libertys-lens.ghost.io) was blunt: “I’m not privy to those demographics. I don’t know.” They claimed not to see race while erasing Black representation. If you resurrected Ulysses S. Grant and showed him what the Court had enabled in Tennessee—the birthplace of the first Ku Klux Klan—he would not struggle to recognize the pattern. The Fifteenth Amendment was written to stop exactly this kind of racist, partisan disenfranchisement. Originalists insisting that the context is unclear know better. This is where reactionary colorblindness reveals its true function. It is not blindness. It is deniability. What cannot be defended openly is reframed as neutral, and what cannot be justified morally is insulated legally. [Leave a comment](#ghost-comments-root) --- ### The Point of “Colorblindness” Is the Outcome When an entire community is severed from democratic accountability, it becomes vulnerable—to economic dispossession, violence, and discrimination. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that this vulnerability is intentional. Disenfranchisement reshapes political incentives: parties abandon communities they no longer need to win elections. The electorate narrows, grows whiter, and becomes more ideologically rigid, closing off entire categories of political claims. In Tennessee, the system has been rigged to such an extent that Black voters are left with taxation without representation. Memphis and Nashville—two of the state’s largest cities—have been carved apart so that neither can elect representatives who reflect their interests. Districts sprawl across hundreds of miles, engineered to ensure dilution. In such a system, ordinary democratic engagement alone is no longer a corrective mechanism. Turnout still matters. Persuasion still matters. But neither is sufficient when power has insulated itself from accountability. Democracy does not defend itself automatically. It survives only when people are willing to name what is being done to it—and organize to force institutions to respond. --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/da/86/da86ac05-de21-4736-8a14-89823a268247/content/images/2026/08/c7a610d4-c0cf-48d7-a0d9-6902957a8e8e_1536x1024-15.png) The Trump regime’s authoritarian project depends on misinformation and disinformation. It thrives in darkness and resists scrutiny. That’s why exposure matters — and why independent media does too. A free society depends on a free press. Not one shaped by access, intimidation, or political loyalty, but one willing to report what those in power would rather keep hidden. *Liberty’s Lens* exists for that purpose. 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