(RNS) — The Supreme Court’s latest ruling on voting rights rests on a faulty premise — the idea that the best way to address racial inequality is not to consider race at all.
In its ruling, the court shifted the burden of proof for race-based gerrymandering of congressional districts from demonstrating discriminatory effects to proving racist intent.
Its harm may extend not only to minority representation in Congress and state legislatures, but to race relations and to Christian witness.
For several decades now, many white Christians have been taught to see “colorblindness” as a virtue — a sign of spiritual maturity that rises above division.
But the 1965 Voting Rights Act was born from a confrontation with the color line. Faced with poll taxes, literacy tests and grandfather clauses, measures to circumvent federal law and disenfranchise Black voters, Black Christians mobilized as a matter of human rights and God-given dignity.
They spoke with moral clarity about the issues of their day, including segregation, lynching, police brutality and the denial of voting rights.
The Black church did not use colorblind language in a society that oppressed them precisely because of their color. In Selma, a voter registration drive turned deadly when police killed activist Jimmie Lee Jackson. In response, leaders organized a meeting at Zion United Methodist Church, where they decided to bring their protest directly to the governor in Montgomery.
When 600 protesters gathered to march from Selma, Alabama, to the state capital of Montgomery, they were violently confronted at the Edmund-Pettus Bridge. Police officers brutally beat civil rights marchers with tear gas and batons in what became known as “Bloody Sunday.”
The images sent cultural shockwaves around the nation, and in the immediate aftermath, President Lyndon B. Johnson sent a bill to Congress. In August 1965, he signed into law the Voting Rights Act.
The act did not emerge from a colorblind agenda. It came from those who spoke clearly about race and power.
But today, many mostly white Christians stand in direct opposition to the legacy of faith-based civil rights activism. They have made an enemy out of race-conscious theories and practices such as Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) and have pejoratively labeled such efforts as “woke.”
Critical Race Theory argues that racial inequality is embedded in laws, systems and institutions. Racist intent is not required to create racial harm. Inequality can result from the ordinary operations of systems built to privilege some and disadvantage others based on race.
This is exactly the kind of analysis that colorblind justices and many colorblind clergy reject.
In 2020, after the murder of George Floyd, Southern Baptist seminary presidents repudiated CRT in a statement recognizing the 20th anniversary of the denomination’s statement of faith, the Baptist Faith & Message. Statements like these inscribe a colorblind ethos in churches and other Christian institutions.
“In light of current conversations in the Southern Baptist Convention, we stand together on historic Southern Baptist condemnations of racism in any form and we also declare that affirmation of Critical Race Theory, Intersectionality, and any version of Critical Theory is incompatible with the Baptist Faith & Message.”
As a result, many white churches and institutions teaching colorblindness say, “I don’t see color” or “I just treat everyone the same.”
In their book, “Divided by Faith,” Michael Emerson and Christian Smith explain that white Christians view racism primarily as individual and interpersonal. The issue, for many white Christians, is bigoted people who mistreat others. The solution, then, is to be kinder and to cultivate relationships across the color line.
Colorblindness, which avoids explicitly naming race or racism as causes of harm, has become a standard form of discipleship in many segments of the church.
When faith communities teach colorblindness, they are teaching their congregants to be silent in the face of devastating decisions like this latest Supreme Court ruling.
They create confusion when Black people and their allies react with outrage, but they are left without the religious or cultural tools to understand the moment.
They appeal to vague ideas of “fairness” and “equality” without regard for historical injustices or contemporary context.
What looks like racial progress actually turns back the clock on civil rights.
The point is not that every Christian must agree politically. It is that Christians must be able to see injustice clearly.
In the gospels, Jesus treats blindness as something to be healed, not a condition to cultivate. Sight, by contrast, is presented as restoration, wholeness and clarity.
But the most important consideration for Jesus is not physical sight; it is spiritual vision.
In the Gospel of John, when Jesus heals the man born blind, he sets up the contrast with the religious leaders, who can physically see, yet cannot perceive the truth in front of them.
Jesus summarizes this episode saying, “For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind” (John 9:39).
Spiritual blindness is a lack of perception and discernment. Sight means truth, recognition and understanding.
Jesus consistently helps people see justice and injustice more clearly and know the difference between them.
The attack on democracy, in this Supreme Court decision on the Voting Rights Act, requires not colorblindness but color consciousness. That means naming the reality of racism and not being afraid to call out racial divisions.
It means exercising moral discernment to judge between right and wrong.
It means cultivating a historical awareness of racism and the ways systems and structures continue to disadvantage certain groups regardless of intent.
It means naming specific wrongs, toward specific groups, specifically.
The Voting Rights Act was born from a church that could see clearly. If today the church cannot see racism clearly, then it re-creates the very conditions that made the act necessary in the first place.
We cannot confront what we have been taught not to see.
(Jemar Tisby is the author of “The Spirit of Justice.” He is the founder and CEO of Tisby Media and writes regularly at JemarTisby.Substack.com. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)