VICKSBURG - It has been intriguing for a long time why so few people have been willing to discuss how the Voting Rights Act of 1965 empowered whites in the South, including Mississippi.
That's not a misprint.
Yes, the act, passed initially during the administration of Lyndon Johnson who saw it as a duty he inherited from John F. Kennedy, was designed to bring a measure of political empowerment to blacks. And it did, too.
Under Section 5, states, counties and towns were told to stop using at-large elections or voting lines that splintered minority voters.
Some court battles lasted for years. Eventually, however, the federal plan prevailed, and districts were drawn that led to the election of black people to city council posts, to seats on boards of supervisors, in the Legislature, on school boards and to judgeships.
Where 42 years ago there were none, Mississippi now brags of having the most black elected officials of any state in the union.
What the act didn't change, however, is that minorities, in most communities, are still in the minority. And no matter how hard anyone tries, it's impossible to concentrate minority voting strength in some districts without concentrating white voting strength in all the others.
Under the Voting Rights Act, black citizens in Mississippi won something they hadn't had in nearly 100 years - seats at the table. But whites, in most instances, still have more seats and so they control the menu. In some cases the control is greater than in Jim Crow days.
The Voting Rights Act was passed with an automatic repealer. The reason was an expectation that the act would kick start an equalization process and that the notions of white supremacy on which segregation had always been based would fizzle. The notion was that America would become colorblind and would learn to address public policy in race-neutral ways.
This was the same approach taken to desegregate schools and workplaces, where it has had much more success.
But in government, there was an insurgency of sorts. Today, the politics of race is very much alive and, as a consequence, the Voting Rights Act has been extended time and again.
Now, some are saying the June 8 decision of U.S. District Judge Allen Pepper that parties have a constitutional right to close their primary elections, if they so desire, will make the political divide permanent.
They may be right.
The best example in recent years of officials working across color lines has been the Mississippi House. Since the election of Gov. Haley Barbour, who now has a Republican majority backing him in the Senate, it has taken a coalition of Democrats, black and white, to try to advance that party's agenda.
While at the city and county level in Mississippi, council and board of supervisor votes are still often split along racial lines, the Mississippi House has been different. Democrats have stuck together on issues, with race often taking a back seat.
The best bet today is that starting next spring, all 1.7 million Mississippi voters will be required to register to vote anew. Under Pepper's decision, they will enroll as Democrats or Republicans or independents.
Republicans, led by Barbour, say their primaries will remain open to all registered voters, period.
But to say Democrats have mixed views on which course they'll take is the understatement of the year. (The fact that the suit leading to Pepper's ruling was filed by a private attorney before state Democratic Party officials even knew about it is pretty telling.)
Anyway, it's a given that the vast majority of black voters in this state will enroll as Democrats. It's what the whites do that will be decisive. Although it will be possible to reregister between future elections, most whites who now support white state Democrats aren't nearly so enamored of federal Democrats, Hillary Clinton to be specific.
If these white voters enroll as Republicans, the proverbial rug will be pulled out from under the white House Democrats whose coalition with black House Democrats has been one of the few bright spots of racial cooperation since the Voting Rights Act was passed.
The overall effect, however, will be a major boost for state Republicans. Indeed, at the state level, Republicans could have solid House and Senate majorities after the 2009 elections.
Black Mississippians would still have seats at the table. But one party, the Republicans, would control the menu perhaps even more decisively than before the Voting Rights Act was passed.
