The Wild Audacity of the Smallest Men

A tribute to Chief Justice John Roberts

How can you tell whether the people who write the laws in your state or country believe your life is as valuable as theirs?

What about the justices who rule on the merit of those laws?

Or the people who work in your local sheriff’s office and police department, who enforce the laws — what would they say about the value of your life? Your daughter’s life? Your son’s? Your partner’s or your best friend’s?

Let’s take it closer to home. How do you know if your neighbors believe your life and your children’s lives are as precious as their own?

Photo by ALEJANDRO POHLENZ on Unsplash

Pencils down. These are all trick questions. The minute people with power are deciding what rights you have, you already know your life is not considered as intrinsically valuable as theirs. If you take it for granted that you have rights — the right to vote without worrying about whether you changed your name when you got married, the right to marry someone you love, the right to lifesaving healthcare no matter what state you’re in or what the circumstances are, the right to go jogging whenever you feel like it and wear a hoodie if you’re cold, the right to drink too much at a bar and know the worst that’s likely to happen is a bad hangover the next day — you are a straight white man. I’m not psychic, but I know that.

For the rest of us, the only power we have is in trying to make sure our voices are heard when the laws are getting written. You want someone in the room saying, “Wait a second, the people in my community — people just like me — need a few things, that’s why they sent me here to represent them. These are the issues that are most pressing right now, most devastating, most dire. This is where they need protection, or improvements or funding for research. Their tax dollars are in the pot, too. Their needs matter.”

That’s representational government, that’s how it’s supposed to work. I don’t have to agree with all the things you want for yourself or your community, but you still get to send people in to try to negotiate on your behalf, and I trust my representatives to battle it out and compromise. You don’t have to like all the things I want for my community, either. No one gets everything, everyone gets something, and presumably in the year 2026 we can all agree on very obvious human decency issues that shouldn’t need to be litigated — like Black people deserve to have civil rights and representation, and so do women. All people deserve to have lifesaving healthcare when they need it, and bodily autonomy.

[ Me running through the streets naked, screaming every expletive imaginable, because NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Apparently, we cannot agree on those very basic, kindergarten-simple things because some crusty old white people just love their white supremacy and their patriarchy and their technocracy. Way to go, you are literally ruining the timeline. You will go down in history as the people who laughed from the doorways, the halls of power, the ballroom bunkers, the rockets to Mars, the giant AI data centers, and your hideous mega-yachts while people were weeping and hungry and heartbroken. Congratulations on being the worst, you win!]

If Justice really was a blindfolded woman, fair and impartial — holding scales in one hand and a sword in the other — the last two weeks would have been different. Life would be different. We’d better make her a Black woman in this fantasy, though, so we don’t get one of those white women who thinks proximity to power will keep her safe. Of course, if Justice was a Black woman, this would not be the conversation we’d need to have.

You’ll agree with me if you’ve been paying attention to the disembowelment of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965, often called the “crown jewel” of the Civil Rights Movement. The jewels are scattered all over the ground at the Lincoln Memorial, but don’t get all weepy-eyed over Abe. He didn’t think Black people should be enslaved, but he didn’t think Black people were his equals, either.

If you’re starting to formulate thoughts like, we need to judge men in the context of the time in which they existed — you sound like the PragerU video about Christopher Columbus — and no we do not — we judge people based on their character. Look around right now, we’re existing in a period of time and you can clearly see how some people are behaving, and what their beliefs are. You can go ahead and draw your conclusions right now, you don’t have to wait.

If the jewels are scattered, the crown is being tossed like a frisbee between smirking old white men and some truly awful women in Tennessee at the moment. Seems like Virginia will be next. They’re wasting no time showing us who they are. I feel physically sick, and I don’t know where to put all my grief. The Speaker of the House, Cameron Sexton, Republican, TN, called a special session so they could redraw the congressional maps after the Supreme Court gutted Section 2 of the VRA last week. Then he told the sheriff to remove citizens who were there to protest.

Citizens are allowed to go to the Capitol, though. They’re allowed to sit in the chamber as long as they reserve a seat. But if the Speaker tells the sheriff to remove people, that’s what the sheriff is going to do. I watched him and his men telling white-haired grandmas they were being disruptive and had to leave, and I heard white-haired grandmas say they were sitting quietly, it was the sheriff and his men who were being disruptive.

I felt my heart swell. I wondered if those men had ever sat at those grandmothers’ tables as little boys, drinking lemonade. I wondered why they were taking orders from a Speaker with no heart or ethics, instead of listening to those grandmas who’ve lived long enough to know what matters. They said they were sorry as they dragged people away. They knew they were on the wrong side.

I watched Tennessee Democratic Representative Justin Pearson hugging his brother KeShaun, twice, long and hard because KeShaun got arrested, and was escorted to a van by eight men dressed in tight khaki sheriff’s department uniforms. I heard the Pearson brothers say, “I love you,” while they hugged, and Justin said he’d call the attorneys in Nashville as KeShaun stepped into the van. I cried watching them hugging like that. I thought about their parents, and wondered if they’d feel scared, angry, proud. Yes, probably. This is all so embarrassing and horrible for our country.

KeShaun Pearson is Executive Director of Memphis Community Against Pollution (MCAP). He did nothing wrong. He just cared about his country, his community, his brother, his life. Normal things. He’s also spoken out against Elon Musk’s gargantuan AI data center in Memphis, and the incredible harm it’s causing in the community. The lack of permits and environmental protections, the sudden spike in asthma and COPD cases in the area. You want to know why the GOP wants to disenfranchise Black voters in Memphis?

Please watch this 17-minute film, I beg you. You won’t be confused for long. That’s KeShaun in the thumbnail here:

The Voting Rights Act was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965 following the Selma to Montgomery marches. The VRA was created because southern states had continued to defy the 15th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution which was ratified in 1870. That Amendment said “no citizen should be denied the right to vote based on race, color, or previous condition of servitude” and was meant to protect the voting rights of newly emancipated Black men after the Civil War; a war fought to determine what kind of country we were going to be — the kind that thought Black people could be owned, that some people were more worthy of dignity and self-actualization than others — or the kind that truly believed all people were created equal.

Well, men, anyway. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. White women didn’t get the right to vote until 1920, and everyone else — Black women, Native American women, Asian women, all Indigenous women and Women of Color continued fighting for the right to vote until 1965, along with all men who were not white men, particularly in the southern states — thus the VRA.

There are two main sections of the VRA you’ve probably been hearing about — Section 2, just gutted, and Section 5, which was hollowed out in 2013 — also by Chief Justice John R. Roberts and friends. I took the liberty of adding the “R.” because he’s earned it. He deserves a hood, too. Here are the most basic things to know:

Section 5 of the law required jurisdictions with a history of voting discrimination to obtain approval from the Department of Justice or a local court before changing any current voting rules — a process known as “pre-clearance.”

So a state like Mississippi, which has an ugly history of voter suppression laws, would have had to reach out to the DOJ or a local state court before they could change any upcoming election rules — like shortening early voting timelines, or decreasing the number of polling places, or changing the available locations so they were harder for certain voters to access, or messing with mail-in voting, or essentially any rules that might make it harder for people to vote. This granted oversight to make sure every citizen’s right to vote was being protected fairly and equally, and no rules were being enacted to “deny or abridge the right to vote on account of race, color, or membership in a language or minority group.” The formula they used to determine whether a state was engaging in racial gerrymandering was laid out in Section 4(b).

Shelby v Holder changed all that in 2013 when Chief Justice John Roberts and his Supreme Court dealt their first blow to the VRA.

Roberts argued that southern states were no longer trying to restrict the voting rights of Black citizens the way they had been in the 1960’s — notwithstanding the 15,000 pages of facts, figures and testimony attorneys presented to the contrary — and Roberts said remedies for current suppression of the Black vote had to reflect current conditions. Then he wrote a lot of other words that led to his conclusion that Section 4(b) was unconstitutional, so “leave it to the states.” Without Section 4(b), Section 5 was dead.

Roberts also said hey, Section 2 is still intact, so it’s cool. Nothing to worry about, Black people! Okay, he didn’t say it like that, he said, “Section 2 is permanent, applies nationwide, and is not at issue in this case.” Turns out “in this case” was doing a lot of the foreboding-type of heavy lifting, though anyone who cares saw the writing on the wall. They haven’t been hiding it.

Even with the Shelby decision he acknowledged southern states were still engaging in voter discrimination.

Barely a page into his majority opinion in Shelby County v. Holder, Chief Justice John Roberts makes a claim that in any other context would seem unremarkable, even obvious: “Voting discrimination still exists; no one doubts that.”

Section 2 of the VRA applied to all 50 states and ensured voting laws were not designed to make it hard for minority voters to participate in elections. It gave voters and organizations a clear path to sue in federal court to challenge discriminatory voting practices. It banned laws that resulted in discrimination without requiring the burden of proof that discrimination was intended, because any state official can say, “This is partisan, not racial” even if everyone with eyes can see it is absolutely racial.

Section 2 was often used to challenge redistricting maps that broke up minority communities to limit their voting power.

The VRA “debate” began in the Senate in early 1982, where South Carolina’s Strom Thurmond, a longtime civil rights critic, was chairman of the Judiciary Committee. “No ‘pattern of discrimination case’ may be filed unless there is clear proof of an intent to discriminate,” the Heritage Foundation recommended in January 1981.

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Y’all, the Heritage Foundation has been playing the long game. You don’t bust out a 920-page document overnight. They wanted this to happen, they’ve been working toward it for decades. When the Shelby decision came down, civil rights attorneys were appalled.

In the seven southern states originally covered by the VRA, for example, Blacks made up 25 percent of the population but held only 5 percent of elected seats.

“In a lot of cases we were talking about, there were no Blacks elected,” said longtime civil rights lawyer Armand Derfner. “We were trying to get from none to some.”

If you’re wondering whether Section 2 mattered, look how fast the GOP in Tennessee drew up a new map, breaking up the one Black-majority Democratic congressional district they had — gleefully and without shame. It took them days.

Here’s a fact for people who might have skipped most of history class or slept through it or something. Guess what sprung up in the south right after news of the Emancipation Proclamation spread?

The Ku Klux Klan. Holy shit! I KNOW. This was not a coincidence. Also, Republicans used to be the liberals, and Democrats used to be the racists.* It will help you to know that when you read the next quote. It’s gonna be weird, so just get it in your brain for a minute, that for this quote you’re about to read, Republicans are liberal, and Democrats are conservative. Opposite Day!

Founded in 1865, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) extended into almost every southern state by 1870 and became a vehicle for white southern resistance to the Republican Party’s Reconstruction-era policies aimed at establishing political and economic equality for Black Americans. Its members waged an underground campaign of intimidation and violence directed at white and Black Republican leaders.

Though Congress passed legislation designed to curb Klan terrorism, the organization saw its primary goal—the reestablishment of white supremacy—fulfilled through Democratic victories in state legislatures across the South in the 1870s.

After a period of decline, white Protestant nativist groups revived the Klan in the early 20th century, burning crosses and staging rallies, parades and marches denouncing immigrants, Catholics, Jews, African Americans and organized labor. The civil rights movement of the 1960s also saw a surge of Ku Klux Klan activity, including bombings of Black schools and churches and violence against Black and white activists in the South.

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A few months ago I sat across from a person I used to consider a friend. I would have said he was a close friend for twenty years of my life. His clear blue eyes sparkled. He looked the same as ever. I met him for coffee because I had seen some strange posts on social media and worried he must be losing his mind. Sign of the times.

How else to explain he’d become a fan of the man who said, “Black women do not have the brain processing power to be taken seriously”? I was devastated because I had always known my friend to be compassionate and fair-minded. I thought there had to be some kind of misunderstanding on his part, that he must not have seen or heard the more despicable things this “influencer” had said, like the quote I just mentioned.

I was wrong. He sat there and told me he was against affirmative action and DEI policies because, “It’s racist to suggest Black people need help getting hired.” My head imploded. I asked if he knew white women benefit from DEI policies more than any other demographic. Veterans also benefit, as do our friends in the LGBTQ community. DEI policies simply mean corporations and employers make sure new job opportunities are offered to a wide range of people from all different backgrounds. Then they pick the most qualified candidate. I said there is no “context” in which it is okay to say the above quote about Black women, full fucking stop.

Anyone who proudly states they are against diversity, not in favor of equity, and anti-inclusion is not a person I can have in my life. *Racists come in every flavor, so do misogynists. They cross party lines, they are equal opportunity offenders. I haven’t spoken to him since that day. He broke my heart profoundly, I would never have guessed this might happen, but I will not collude with that. I will not look the other way or excuse it.

Take that burning toxic waste, and don’t let the door hit you in the ass on your way out, because if Black people aren’t safe with you, and brown people aren’t safe with you, then women aren’t safe with you and queer people aren’t safe with you and neither is anyone who isn’t a straight, white man. Not sure they’re especially safe with you, either. Enjoy “teaching yoga” I guess. Enjoy never worrying about whether you are safe, must be nice.

You have to willfully ignore American history to be against affirmative action and DEI policies, or to be a white person and look another white person in the eye and call those policies racist.

Jim Crow Laws were racist. Segregation was racist. Making a Black mother explain to her tiny, beautiful children why they could only drink from the water fountain marked “Colored” was racist.

Hey Becky, try to imagine what it would be like the very first time you had to explain to your sweet little girl why she has to sit at the back of the bus with you, while her little friend with different colored skin sits up front. Really picture that for a minute, flip it around, feel it in your heart. White people in the back. What would you even say to her while she blinked up at you with her trusting eyes. Better she hears it from you, right? The world is gonna break her heart soon enough.

That’s racist. You, explaining to your child that a lot of the world will think of her as “less than” because of how she looks. That a lot of the world looks at her mom that way, and her dad, too. Her beloved brothers and sisters. That’s why you have to go in the back door. That’s why you can only use certain bathrooms. That’s why you go to the school with almost no resources.

Doesn’t that make you feel sick in your soul?

The segregation and disenfranchisement laws known as “Jim Crow” represented a formal, codified system of racial apartheid that dominated the American South for three quarters of a century beginning in the 1890s. The laws affected almost every aspect of daily life, mandating segregation of schools, parks, libraries, drinking fountains, restrooms, buses, trains, and restaurants. “Whites Only” and “Colored” signs were constant reminders of the enforced racial order.

Jim Crow Laws made it hard for newly emancipated Black men to vote, no matter what the 15th Amendment said, because there were plenty of southerners who didn’t want them to have a voice or a say, and they were angry and mean. They came up with voting rules to make things impossible — literacy tests even though they knew full well slaves had never been taught to read, because slaveowners had forbidden it. They knew, because they’d been the slaveowners.

Black Wall Street and the Tulsa Massacre? It’s hard to describe the depravity here, and if you’ve ever wondered about the level of cruelty people can inflict on an entire community if they decide certain people exist outside their circle of compassion, look no further. This is racism and it is painful and ugly and very much a part of our history.

It’s why you never want to be the white person raising your hand in the comments section of a Black writer or the zoom conversation of a Black activist saying, “I’ve never done anything racist, I don’t want to be lumped in with all those awful racist people from the past, or the racist people in my neighborhood. I’m one of the good white people.” Just don’t. Trust me on this, truly, pipe down. If you need it decoded, that’s the white-person-version of the men who say, “not all men.” You don’t want to be that guy, and you don’t want to be that white person. Just be quiet and learn or there are going to be bears everywhere.

The gall of arrogant white men getting upset about affirmative action and DEI policies is breathtaking. What kind of unbelievably fragile men are these who can’t handle the mere suggestion of a more level playing field and the teensy tiniest attempts to acknowledge there are going to be repercussions when you stand on the necks and backs of a particular group of people for hundreds of years? Oh jeez, so sorry. Did you want to pretend none of that happened and isn’t still happening? Did you want us all to dance around and make babies and buy your favorite cheese while our neighbors are gunned down in the streets and they take our rights away one at a time, and you … what are you doing, actually? Telling me what I’m getting wrong?

Not all of you, obviously.

If you are not sure about what happened before and during the Civil Rights Movement and the VRA, or why so many people died fighting for their rights, it is important you understand, in your bones. Here are restored photos taken by James “Spider” Martin who was there in Selma on “Bloody Sunday.” It wasn’t called Bloody Sunday at the time, it was just a protest when activists like Martin Luther King, Jr, and the late, great John Lewis, and Amelia Boynton attempted to march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge on their way to Montgomery.

What kind of a man must John Roberts be, aside from what he’s made so evident? I’m surprised he didn’t take the bloody entrails of Section 2 to William Rehnquist’s grave to celebrate. Maybe he did. He’s had it in for the VRA for decades. Imagine your legacy could be walking across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, risking your life for everything good and decent in this world — or you could be remembered as the guy who tried to undo all that work.

He will not succeed, though, not for long. He’ll be an ugly little footnote in the history books.

There are other voices, beautiful voices, the voices of people who do not want things to be this way — and those are always the voices we remember. There are videos everywhere of people locking arms with their neighbors and refusing to move. People putting their bodies on the line. It’s been happening all along, but I think something in the collective just clicked. Maybe people are starting to understand we really could lose our country.

These people in power? They do not care about any of us. They don’t think our lives are of equal value to theirs, but I’ll tell you what. I’m done trying to convince anyone of my worth, aren’t you? I throw my head back and laugh at the wild audacity of mediocre men to think they get to ascribe a value to any of us. Markwayne, please. Take all the seats.

I’m with her:

Senate Democratic Caucus Chair London Lamar (D-Memphis) was visibly tearing up on the floor before she admonished her Republican colleagues for bending to the whims of Blackburn and Trump, rather than defending voting rights.

“This is how democracy dies in our face. It’s not always with violence in the street. It is those secret meetings you have in the back of your rooms,” Lamar said of the lack of transparency and process around the redistricting.

“You may have the votes to pass this map, but you don’t have the moral authority to do what’s right.”

There’s one kind of authority, like the kind a mean drunk might wield. It could be someone you run from because you know you’re not safe, but they call the shots. They have authority because you’re a kid and they pay the bills and make the decisions about your life, and what are you going to do, you’re stuck. A lot of us feel that way about the president. Like we’re dealing with an abusive parent and we wake up every day trying to duck and cover, but also figure out how to show up for our people, find some joy, check on our friends, make some art.

Then there’s moral authority, and that’s a whole other thing. That’s a thing you feel in your chest, like those grandmas sitting in the chamber, telling those sheriff’s boys that they’re the disruption. That’s moral authority. You feel it, you don’t have to think about it. That’s the team I want to be on.

There have been a lot of devastating decisions coming down from this Supreme Court lately. It breaks my heart as someone who grew up thinking the Supreme Court was this hallowed place where the justices would follow the Constitution to the best of their ability, and not allow partisan politics to muddy the waters. But like the other two branches of our government, their ethics have been compromised.

It’s a real shame to see, but if you want moral authority, you won’t find it there. I worry about what may happen Monday, what they’ll take from women and girls next, how close to Gilead we’re going to get before we rise, but worrying won’t change anything, so when I’m done worrying, I think about what we do.

If there’s any silver lining in all of this, I am hoping it’s that the group of us who have always had to fight for our rights (and I am in no way putting us on a level playing field, just — there are Straight White Men of Some Means — and the rest of us) will finally understand we will be a lot stronger if we fight together. Our fates are tied and they always have been.

Have you ever loved someone with your entire heart, but also been able to see they are deeply flawed and need help? If you have, you know the only way they can heal is if they get honest with themselves and look at the mistakes they’ve made and the people they’ve hurt along the way, try to make amends where possible, and do better moving forward. Sometimes (often) the most loving thing you can do is hold up a mirror. That’s how I feel about our country.

It’s time to hold up a lot of mirrors, and get ourselves seen and heard. We tried being good, polite, nice. Look where it got us. They are not going to listen willingly, that much is clear. Arms locked, breathing fire, that’s where I’m at. I’ve seen a number of Black people in my feeds saying they really hope white people are going to show up this time. It reminds me of how I’ve been saying I really hope the good men are going to show up. Anyway, I will be out there, out front, everywhere I can be. We sure can’t save the country from our couches.

It has been brutal, but I am not without hope. We will not let dark-hearted, mean-spirited soulless people win.

Sending you a lot of love.

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