Recent comments made by some black political activists show how for them it’s not about advancing the black community, but about advancing black leftist political interests, with a little help from a writer a bit too eager to inject bias into recounting their musings.

A story about the impact that black voting turnout could have on elections a fortnight away solicited opinions from state and local elected, party, and interest group leaders revealed a narrowly-construed array of attitudes more indicative of an America of six decades ago than reflecting today’s reality. These also served as an indictment of failure of these leaders and those who have or had shared these beliefs in improving the prospects of the entirety of black America.

Admittedly, the journalist who authored the piece, Tyler Bridges, didn’t do them any favors in presenting their views. For example, in referring to the U.S. Supreme Court case Louisiana v. Callais, it misstates the decision, which reaffirmed that race could be a primary consideration in reapportionment only when there is identified intent of discrimination against a protected class. That ruling corrected a drift over the decades where intent had become superseded by outcome, or the belief that the proportion of black officials elected in a jurisdiction had to match roughly the proportion of blacks in the population; if that wasn’t the case, systemic bias existed despite laws that bent over backwards to ensure otherwise. The author instead injects opinion when writing the decision “weakened voting rights protections,” as if there was genuine justification to putting race foremost in mapping.

That assumption hews to the view of some quoted in the article, fretting that the number of black representatives elected will decrease. More specifically, they speculated that “Republican-controlled” state and local bodies will reapportion to “strengthen Republican majorities” on those.

Ignored context, however, informs that if such apportioned jurisdictions exist unconstitutionally, because these have districts drawn with race in mind and intended to favor black candidacies as in almost every instance, then governing authorities must bring them into constitutional compliance. That likely would harm black interests only in the case that the interests of “blacks” and “liberal Democrats” necessarily are conflated, which isn’t the case.

Nor does it follow that a race-neutral application in absence of intended discrimination means that constitutionality corrections will give unfair advantage to non-blacks. Consider one of the most prominent reapportionment exercises in the wake of the decision, the Florida congressional map. Viewing the new 2026 version as opposed to the 2022 one it replaced, the visual presentation shows no great contortions as far as contiguity, compactness, etc.; in short, following traditional criteria, if not the 2026 map doing a better job than that of 2022 by these measures. That’s as mapmakers still must utilize these principles because these are nondiscriminatory in nature, without injecting race into the equation.

In fact, Florida stands as an example of the mistaken implication made by these interviewees that black interests must equate to Democrat identification and leftist agendas. Republican Rep. Byron Donalds, who is black, represents the state’s 19^th District and is poised to become its next governor. Only by making the nonsensical statement that someone genetically black must by definition support leftist ideas or else he is a traitor to his genes, treating “black” as biological when it suits a political agenda but as an attitude or state of mind when it doesn’t, can that suspension of disbelief bring any intellectual consistency to the argument made by these activists.

As if to amplify these concerns that, as one quoted black Jackson Parish Police juror remarked, “If they could get every seat on the police jury White [sic], they would do it. This area is racist,” or as a parish NAACP official put it, “Any time Blacks [sic] have come into a certain status, the Whites are totally against that,” in society wild-eyed white racists from the top on down were conspiring to keep black folk down simply because they are black, Bridges mused that black voters could be stimulated to turn out to vote because of alleged “Gov. Jeff Landry’s moves against Black elected officials in New Orleans.”

A less biased, more accurate way to put that would be, assuming that vague passage referred to any of the state’s attempts to prod the city’s fiscal house into order, or an attempt by city officials to bring criminal charges against GOP Atty. Gen. Liz Murrill soon laughed out of court and which invited prosecution by Murrill backed by Landry, or the Legislature and Landry successfully advocating for consolidation of city courts and one clerk of court’s office that reduced the total number of Orleans elected black officials, or Landry dealing out tough fiscal love to entice the city to get its act together (which has provoked a half-serious response), to write that these were Landry’s moves against leftist elected officials in New Orleans (a few are white). Landry didn’t back a return to the rule of law or better government to punish black politicians because they were black, but because their leftism produced bad policy and decisions.

To update Samuel Johnson’s aphorism, accusations of racism are the last refuge of a scoundrel. If leftist officials of any ethnicity could point to specific laws and regulations, or a political party’s agenda, that have no other purpose than to discriminate, they might have a case. They can’t. Instead, they typically advocate for bigger and bigger government spending more and more and increasing the privileging of their constituencies, when that agenda ends up enabling rather than advancing (example: $30 trillion spent on welfare programs from 1960 to 2022 with an official poverty rate that barely has budged), in essence asking for more of the same that hasn’t budged the needle. And when confronted with that record of failure, they cry racism.

That’s not leadership; it’s serving self-interest. Their attitude is why they can’t win elections and their policy prescriptions don’t solve anything, if not make matters worse for the groups they allege to represent. They don’t represent the best interests of black Americans; they represent their own liberal class interest that gives them power and prestige but fails black Americans, as their comments leave no doubt about.