READING TIME: 4 minutes
SUMMARY: The Confederacy fired one last shot at the end of the Civil War, and it was more devastating than the assassination of Lincoln. With the diaspora for Southern anti-democratic, authoritarian, oligarchy white supremacy, they infected the country with their rot. That rot festered in the heart of John Roberts, and it has now ended the Voting Rights Act and the gains of the Civil Rights movement.
KEY TERMS: Supreme Court, John Roberts, Civil War, the Confederacy, White Supremacy, Voting Rights Act, Racism, Geography, Culture, Colin Woodard
COMMENTS: The fight against racism, white supremacy, and oligarchy isn’t over. What can we do to help rid our country of this poisonous culture?
On 9 April 1865, the Confederacy fired its last and most effective bullet at the heart of our democracy. Most of us remember that date as the day Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House, officially ending hostilities in the rebellion, even though fighting continued and other surrenders followed for months. We think of it as the day the South officially lost the Civil War. We are wrong. The Civil War has not ended. The struggle against our democracy continues with its greatest victories being delivered by the Supreme Court of the United States.
The mild-mannered, very serious, very formal, and universally well-liked John Roberts has done more to make blatant wanton open racism acceptable again than anyone since the Civil War. He’s the wind-up toy of the white nationalists wing of the Federalist Society. They wound him up and pointed him straight at the Voting Rights Act.
John Roberts’ Alleged Racist Tendencies
We don’t know where John Roberts’ racist tendencies came from, but we do know where they went and the route they took. First up in the hit parade of questionable racial beliefs is stanning for Daniel “Fugitive Slave Law” Webster when he wrote his classic award winning senior-year paper at Harvard, “The Utopian Conservative: A Study of Continuity and Change in the Thought of Daniel Webster,” in which he must’ve documented Webster’s transformation from a conservative politician standing up for his beliefs and convictions into a politically craven politician beholden to donors to support his lavish irresponsible spending and willingness to compromise with Southern insurrectionist, authoritarian, anti-democratic, slave owning, white supremacists in the vain hope of winning the 1852 presidential election. Who knew the Southern strategy started BEFORE the Civil War?
Next in this hit parade of racial oppression and animus is Roberts’ clerkship to Judge Henry Friendly. How dare you besmirch the Judge’s Judge, sir! Judge Friendly is widely viewed as being committed to enforcing the law equally for all citizens. Yes, but he was also a believe in slow incremental change with the judiciary not the primary driver of social change. While Judge Friendly, probably, wasn’t any more racist than the average upper middle class white person born in 1903, so he probably didn’t vibe with Roberts over overt racism — they were reputed to have bond. But, what social issue represents a major change in American society? Could it be racism? I’m just saying it gave Roberts a veneer of legitimacy and intellectual fairness.
Third, he clerked for Justice Rehnquist while he was on the Supreme Court but before being elevated to Chief Justice. It is important to note that during both of Rehnquist’s confirmation hearings, he was questioned aggressively about his behavior at Arizona polling places in the 1962 by elections challenging the legitimacy of some voters — Spoiler: Black and Hispanic voters. Eye witnesses testified in his confirmation hearings that he got physical with some voters going so far as to push them and he got in people’s faces. In 1964, Barry Goldwater took the practice and Rehnquist national with the aptly named, Operation Evil Eye, er, I mean, Operation Eagle Eye. In a nauseating affirmation of history not repeating itself so much as regurgitating itself, they claimed they were protecting the integrity of the vote.
The important part here is Rehnquist’s zealous challenging of the legitimacy of Black and Brown voters. Rehnquist was a full card-carrying, due-paying member the conservative Republican, um, are Black people really allowed full citizenship caucus. In other words, he was an out-of-the-closet racist. Whether Rehnquist infected Roberts with the racist virus, we’ll never know, but after that clerkship, Roberts was a vocal critic of racial equality.
And, the fourth stop on the white supremacist train was Roberts’ stint in Reagan’s White House Council’s office and Poppy’s DoJ as deputy solicitor general. In 1982 when the Voting Rights Act was up for renewal and was being amended to strengthen protections for voters, he wrote an infamous memo arguing that the intent to limit voting was more important than the actual results when evaluating voting legislation. He went further in other memos stating that protections against discrimination were no longer needed. And, distinctions based on race were universally detrimental even if used to address past discrimination and ensure equal protection. All of which have been encapsulated and retained and used to arrogantly tell Black people that their lived reality isn’t what they experienced in his Supreme Court decisions. You can’t get more overtly racist than that.
Linking Roberts to the Confederacy
What links Roberts’ post-race America views to the Confederacy? How did the Southern authoritarian oligarchical white supremacists capture John Roberts, especially considering that Roberts was brought up in northern Indiana. First, he lived on the shores of Lake Michigan in the fairly wealthy white enclave of Long Beach, where property deeds forbade the sale of homes to Black or Jewish people. Those deeds weren’t accidents, they didn’t write themselves. They are part of the way the South took Indiana without firing a shot.
In his book, American Nations, historian Colin Woodard documents how regional culture travels with its people — not just in their personal attitudes but through the institutions they build and the practices those institutions normalize. When Southerners, particularly from the Appalachian Uplands, flooded into Indiana’s industrial centers and farmland during Reconstruction and the Great Migration, they brought that culture with them. They brought it so thoroughly and so effectively that by the 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan didn’t just operate in Indiana — it dominated state politics. Not fringe politics. Not county politics. State politics. Until the New Deal turned the kitchen light on and drove them under the refrigerator, where it waited until their next opportunity to emerge.
By the time a young John Roberts was riding his bicycle through the lily-white streets of Long Beach, there was ample air pollution left by the Klan a generation earlier for him to inhale. Those deed restrictions were its fingerprints. That’s not speculation — that’s how culture works, which is exactly what Woodard documents. The bullet fired at Appomattox was still traveling. It found a home in John Roberts’ heart in Long Beach, Indiana, and eventually onto the Supreme Court.
The Confederacy didn’t need to fire another shot after Appomattox. It needed patience, institutions, and lawyers. Roberts is what that patience looks like after a century and a half of cultivation — a man shaped by deed-restricted white neighborhoods, mentored by the suppressor of Black and B , seasoned in administrations hostile to civil rights, and installed on the nation’s highest court to finish what Lee couldn’t. The evisceration of the Voting Rights Act, expanding political gerrymandering, loosening campaign finance laws, and the slow erasure of precedent — these aren’t separate conservative legal victories. They are coordinated attacks on the country in a war most Americans think ended in 1865. It didn’t. It just put on a robe.
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Roberts is a political hack……I live in the South and Roberts echoes everything most white Mississippians have been look for and now they have it. Great post by the way….kudos chuq
And what is equal parts surprising and alarming is that he has been an obvious political hack for his entire life and yet he still made it into the judiciary, onto the Supreme Court, and to be the Chief Justice. It means everyone who supported, hired, nominated, and confirmed him knew he was a hack and wanted a hack in those positions. It isn’t so much conspiracy as it is an agreement that our democracy can be and should be subverted.
Blog On, Sibling!
Jack
That is the goal of the Federalist Society whom gives Conservs their nominees. chuq
Howdy Chuq!
Which means they’re goals and beliefs are clearly articulated. They are recruiting and grooming people to subvert the Constitution. In some ways it is a conspiracy to destroy our democracy and usher in the Southern oligarchy from the Confederacy.
Huzzah!
Jack
Yep! chuq
And thanks to the linkage between The Federalist Society and Republican Presidents and their judicial nominations, Roberts has had plenty of help at SCOTUS. The adherents of the anti-democratic authoritarian racist agenda do not sleep or rest. They truly believe they are divinely chosen to rule and must eventually triumph, whether by tiny steps, or leaps and bounds, or two steps forward (backward) and one back. And it is not just this country. They believe “The White Race” is meant to rule all the world and all others are meant to serve.
Excellent history lesson.
Howdy Bob!
The devil danced a jib when the Evangelical Christians met up with the white supremacists. It is a match that only the Devil themself could love. Both are more than willing to let their ends justify their means and to believe in the righteousness of their cause.
Rehnquist got his start by being “recognized” by his fellow racist travellers in the conservative West and recruited to work the voter suppressive poll watchers. They were organized then, pioneering many of the same techniques that are being used today. Much of the rhetoric is unchanged from what it was in the mid 50’s and before.
They realized then that they needed to play the long game and set about doing it. One of the things that may have changed, though, is that the opposition to them changed. We got caught up in the Me Generation and if it feels good do it mishegas and took our eye off the ball. Meanwhile, they’ve been chipping away wherever they can and exploiting whatever issue du jour they can.
We have fought this fight before and prevailed. We’ve had the misfortune of living long enough to see this fight cycle back onto the front burner. Honestly, there was a stretch from the ’90’s to 10’s when I thought we might’ve had it won. But, the inner racist waits quietly in many of us. It waits patiently for the sirene call of the dog whistle to turn out and vote against your own best interest and for that which will hurt the Other first and worst.
Blog On, Sibling!
Jack
We thought that the SCOTUS rulings upholding the VRA, CRA, abortion, union rights, etc. by the Warren court would stand forever, the Law Of The Land. How naive we were!
Soon, we will know whether the clear language of the 14th Amendment can be turned on it’s head and rendered nonsense, by an argument so at odds with the structure of the English language that any of the teachers of that subject I ever had would have drowned it in red ink.
Still, if We The People want to outlaw racial and partisan gerrymandering, for example, the lesson still is to put it into the Constitution. That might still get f’d around with sometime, but it is the best bet we have.
As the saying goes, the price of democracy is eternal vigilance.
Howdy Bob!
Elections matter and so do the people we elect. We have to get people who truly respect democracy in office and understand how it works. If we had, we wouldn’t be having these issues now. On its face, gerrymandering is anti-democratic, so it has to be outlawed. What did Marsha Blackburn salivate over the other day? A perpetual Republican majority in Tennessee? There is nothing more anti-democratic than dreaming of a permanent majority. It’s against democracy and nature.
I wish I had the skills to produce Tik-Tok and YouTube videos that echoed SchoolHouse Rock. We really need smart accessible educative information on how our government works. It is alarming that seventy-seven million people were willing to vote for a known insurrectionist and theif of classified documents and support a party so brazenly anti-American.
The Supreme Court was supposed to be the backstop to our democracy, enforcing our laws, traditions, and norms, but we elected people who would appoint and confirm those who would do the opposite.
Blog On, Sibling!
Jack
The permanent majority was the battle cry of Neut Gingrich and has been the platform of the GOP since then, and it includes telling some very fringe people that they are the majority and the “Real Americans”.
For winning elections, nothing is more important than turnout. We need the highest midterm election turnout ever recorded.
Howdy Bob!
I’ve been doing a deeper dive into the history of white supremacism in America, and I’m surprised by how little the rhetoric and ideas have changed since the eighteenth century. They just keep regurgitating the same old crap every generation. America is for “real Americans” we are told nowadays and the rights and privileges protected in the Constitution are only for those “real Americans.” And, the real American hasn’t changed, it is white straight men. The way god intended, they tell us.
History doesn’t repeat itself, it regurgitates itself.
Huzzah!
Jack
Well, since they get their “facts” straight from G-d, why would their ossified opinions ever change?
Personally I don’t think his racism necessarily has any ties to the South. This country has more than enough racism without having to reach for those kinds of ties. Wisconsin has not really been influenced by traditional southern attitudes but Milwaukee remains one of these most racist cities in the country and despite it’s attempts to pretend that it is “inclusive” the rest of the state isn’t far behind. I didn’t realize just how bad my state was until I hired the 14 year old daughter of the only black family in town to babysit my kids back in the late 1980s. Almost every neighbor I had at the time approached me about allowing “one of those people” into my home. They were going to steal me blind, they were going to addict my kids to drugs… the list went on and on. It was genuinely horrifying. Eventually the family was hounded out of town.
Fast forward to the early 2000s when I started working at one of the local school districts. There was only one black kid, a teenaged boy, in the high school. He pointed at something and asked one of his friends to get it for him. A teacher saw it and he was suspended for three days for “making threatening gestures by making a pistol like shape with his hand”.
We don’t need to reach for the South for explanations for racism. It’s been here all along.
Howdy Grouchy!
I didn’t go into all of Woodard’s material, but he has a very compelling explanation of how the settlers of an area establish a culture for the area through the institutions and social structures that they develop there. Those institutions keep the culture moving. You’d think that people moving into the area would change the culture, but what ends up happening is that the people change to fit where they live. So, when the exodus from the Deep South happened, those people moved to areas that were rapidly expanding and didn’t have a firmly established geographical culture. In Indiana that meant the industrial growth in the early twentieth century. The institutions that either expanded or were established to service the needs of the burgeoning population — police, schools, government bureaucracy — were frequently filled by these white Southerners. They established that culture.
Wisconsin was settled by Easterners from New York and those same Appalachian Uplanders that came to Indiana as well as Germans, Poles, and Norwegians during the mid and late 1800s. Wherever those Appalachian Uplanders settled in any significant numbers, they brought their version of racist white supremacist pro-slavery culture. It has differences with areas of the Deep South, but they all share the white supremacy part.
It is true that the Germans, Poles, and Norwegians all had their own take on racism and views of slavery, but you can’t discount the influence of that Confederate diaspora that happened from 1865 through to the early twentieth century.
Huzzah!
Jack
never did i think i would end up in a fascist country..but here i am. so grateful all the vets in my family have already died. i only wish i would so i don’t have to witness any more horrors against the American people.
There’s a sarcastic bucket list joke in there somewhere, but, by golly, I do not have the heart to make it. I’m hoping — hoping because I never know what I’m going to post next until I post it — I’m hoping to post a more hopeful article about being one of many set backs that we’ve experienced throughout our history and that we can see this one off, too, if we keep the faith and do the hard work necessary. It is just our time to do it all over again.
Jack
And he and the rest of the Revanchist 6 are about to tear down the plain text of the 14th Amendment, and end birthright citizenship.
If, as the administration claims the 14th only ever applied to the babies of slaves, that means Trump is no longer eligible for the Presidency, because almost no one but Black Americans are citizens…because the 14th is the only part of the Constitution that codifies WHO IS A CITIZEN.
Howdy Bruce!
But, you know they follow the principle of whatever I need to reach the goals that I want is what they’ll use. The ends justify the means. They have zero interest in being consistent or internal logic or anything that we were taught was the right way to be. They are only concerned in shaping the world to meet their needs and desires. They’ll say anything they have to in order to get that done. They got zero fucks to give for what you or I think about it, too. Because they are fully behind prosecute our critics to the furthest extent possible and let our friends do whatever the fuck they want.
Huzzah!
Jack