SCOTUS’s Affirmative Action Rulings Bring the Far-Right One Step Closer to Resurrecting the Confederacy
By GS Potter, PhD
The line between our Democracy and their Confederacy is very thin.
It has been etched through war, embedded through policy, and defended though the movements waged for Civil Rights. But there are over 72 million people in the United States that declared support for a vision of America that excludes people that aren’t white, straight or male when they voted for Donald Trump in 2020. 54 million declared their support for the Confederate flag wielding party that launched an insurrection when they cast votes for Republicans during the 2022 midterm elections. But the truth remains, the Confederates don’t need Donald Trump, the White House or Congress to destroy the Union. They only need 5 people on the Supreme Court. And they have 6.
As many analysts have noted, the Supreme Court’s recent evisceration of affirmative action in the United States deals a direct blow to efforts to prevent active White supremacists and run of the mill racists from blocking students of color from accessing higher education. They have noted that the effects of the Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. University of North Carolina and Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College rulings will eventually dismantle formal efforts to overcome exclusion and segregation in both the public and private sectors. What they are failing to capture is the fact that SCOTUS’s decision is an extension of a larger strategy designed to undo the Civil War by neutralizing the three Constitutional Amendments that stand between the Union and the Confederacy.
Known as the Reconstruction Acts, the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments were codified to end slavery, give Black men citizenship and Constitutional rights, and ensure that Black men were extended the right to vote. Over time and through the blood and battles fought through various movements for Civil Rights, these Amendments were expanded to include protections for women, people living with disabilities, people form the LGBTQ community, and other categories of people that aren’t White or that have historically been the targets of White supremacists.
While still exceptionally thin, the lines between slaveholders and those they would seek to make slaves of had incrementally been increasing in width – until Donald Trump was elected President.
The rise of Donald Trump and the far-right MAGA movement that accompanied him signified the most coordinated and powerful effort to destroy the Union since Confederate troops fired on Fort Sumter in 1861.
In 2016, Confederate leaders did something they were able to do even with an organized army. They took control of the White House. And with that control, they placed three far right judges on the Supreme Court and tipped the balance of power in their favor for what could be decades. The damage they have dealt cannot be understated.
In the nation that once served as the beacon of Democracy worldwide, weapons used to gun down school children are allowed to pass through the doors of our schoolhouses but books that teach about Black history are not. People have lost the freedom to express love unless the state sanctions their sexuality. Women have lost the right to manage medical decisions regarding their own bodies.
And while many have grown complacent with the comfort provided by the current Democratically controlled Senate and White House, the foot soldiers of the Confederacy have continued their efforts to breach the three-lawed-wall that prevents them from resurrecting the Antebellum and placing the nation under the chokehold of the Southern Cross.
Voting Right, Civil Rights, and Slavery. Those are the three pillars of Northern Democracy that must be brought to ruins if the Confederacy is to rise.
In 2021, far right legal strategists gutted the 15th Amendment and the Voting Rights Act through the case of Brnovich v Democratic National Committee. In 2023, they not only began to excise the protective powers of the 14th Amendment and the Civil Rights Act, but repurposed them to protect White supremacy with the Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. University of North Carolina and Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. Presidents and Fellows of Harvard College rulings. And there is at least one case designed to legalize unpaid labor making its way through the court system. The 13th Amendment is not safe.
The Republicans don’t need Trump to revive the Confederacy. They don’t even need the White House or Congress. They have the courts. Their march to victory has already victoriously devoured two-thirds of the precariously thin line that divides Democracy and fascism. It is still tearing through the safeguards of the Union in efforts to resurrect the Confederacy.
We can’t grow complacent. We can’t let them win.
