Black Candidates Do Not Need Black Voters to Win (Deroy Murdock, May 15, 2026, American Spectator)
In her dissenting opinion, liberal Justice Elena Kagan argued: “If other States follow Louisiana’s lead, the minority citizens residing there will no longer have an equal opportunity to elect candidates of their choice.”
Can Kagan read the minds of “minority citizens?” If not, how would she know whether the “candidates of their choice” are minorities, Democrats, or anything else?
Also important: Where is it written that minority candidates must represent minority voters?
Tennessee’s 9th Congressional District is 61.3 percent black and only 24.5 percent white, the Census Bureau reports. And yet, since 2006, this majority-black, greater-Memphis electorate has voted 10 times to send Steve Cohen to the U.S. House. Cohen is white.
Conversely, the Left whines that black Democrats can win only if a majority of voters of color (typically black) elect them. They assume that black contenders cannot secure a plurality or even a majority of white votes. This racist argument suggests that black candidates lack the charm, ideas, or ideas to win white votes, and/or whites are too bigoted to back blacks.
Thus, race-obsessed Democrats concentrate black candidates in constituencies that resemble South Africa’s Apartheid-era Bantustans. Predominantly minority congressional districts recall Bophuthatswana, KwaZulu, Transkei, and other black “homelands.” And yet, for decades, constituencies with neither black majorities nor shapes like Rorschach blots have elected black Democrats and Republicans.