By Graylan Scott Hagler | Word In Black
(WIB) – If anyone is wondering where we are as a country, the answer is we are where we have always been. The country is trying to revisit its defeated ghosts of the past, attempting to restore the tools of the Confederacy and affirm and cement white supremacy into the fabric of the country.
The Trump/MAGA quest for exclusivism has made this very clear. The glimmer of hope for many has been that the courts would restrain this regime from its basic desire for tribalism, where being white is the norm and all else is considered a threat. But the Supreme Court has failed once again. The court ruled on the limitations of law enforcement to stop, question, and harass individuals as part of immigration and deportation enforcement.
Expanding Police Powers
What the Supreme Court said, in effect, was that law enforcement can stop and question without a defined reason, probable cause, or any semblance of articulable criteria. In other words, the Supreme Court has given a green light to racial profiling. This means that people can be stopped based on looks, accents, language, hairstyles, fashion, and cultural expression — as well as the way they walk, or even mannerisms that may attract the attention of, or trigger the biases of, law enforcement agents. This ruling makes the use and abuse of police powers an increased threat not only to the immigrant population but to all of us who are not white.
There is an illusion that our ultimate and best defense against this administration’s authoritarian proclivities is the courts. But the Supreme Court and its conservative bloc have been shown to overturn the restraints imposed by the lower courts. Therefore, the protection of the courts is an illusion that has failed us at crucial junctures in the past and the present.
A History of Betrayal
We can cite the 1954 decision of Brown v. Board of Education as a bright light of hope and victory when “separate but equal” was challenged and Jim Crow laws were struck down. There is a history of the Supreme Court upholding voting rights laws that had been under constant attack since their first passage directly after the Civil War. But the Supreme Court more recently has leaned toward gutting all voting rights guarantees.
In 2013, in Shelby v. Holder, the court eliminated any preclearance of changes to state voting laws and districts, making it impossible for the federal government to proactively intervene, and therefore all but eliminating voting rights protections. The rationale was that the racism that previously required those protections no longer existed.
RELATED: Voting Rights Act Faces Extinction at 60
The Supreme Court has a long history of falling on the side of racial injustices. Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896 ruled that Louisiana did not violate the 14th Amendment and upheld segregation laws limiting the access and freedoms of Black people and sanctioning Jim Crow laws.
The Dred Scott decision was stark. It was rendered in 1857 and was one of the worst decisions in court history. It was racist, lacked legal reasoning, and denounced any legal status of Black people. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney ruled that Black people were not included, nor intended to be included, under the word “citizens” in the U.S. Constitution and therefore could not claim any rights or privileges afforded by the Constitution.
SCOTUS and the Myth of Colorblindness
The ruling was devastating as it went on to state that Black people were not entitled to any safeguards of the Constitution or the Bill of Rights. Taney penned the infamous words: “They had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit.”
In 2022, the Supreme Court reversed itself from a 1973 ruling on abortion, creating a maelstrom in reproductive health care. Then, in 2023, the Supreme Court dismantled any consideration of race in college and university admissions. Chief Justice John Roberts, a constant and longtime critic of affirmative action, opined for the court’s majority that colleges and universities must use a “colorblind” criterion in admissions. Even the notoriously silent Clarence Thomas felt compelled to read a statement: “Those policies fly in the face of our colorblind Constitution.”
A Court Slanted to the Right
In a perfect world, we would expect the Supreme Court to be rational, reasoned, trying to protect the rights and dignity of minorities against the tyranny of the majority, and aligning its interpretation of the Constitution and laws with an American population that has grown in diversity and has racially expanded. Instead, the court, which is unquestionably slanted to the right, has grossly failed in protecting the rights of inclusion.
Those rights are characterized in voting, women’s body autonomy, LGBTQIA protections, the advancement of racial justice, and the general protection of the most vulnerable in society. This should be the mandate of the highest court in an increasingly heterogeneous country. Instead, this Supreme Court seems to be content with turning back the clock and pulling the rug out from under a diverse population, undermining the ideals of inclusion and failing to thoughtfully correct the historical and lasting wrongs of the past.
The Supreme Court’s latest decision allows law enforcement to use their stereotypical biases in interacting with the U.S. population. The court ruled that there are no limitations imposed on law enforcement to stop, question, and harass people. Every law enforcement agent is now invited to bring their pro-white, stereotypical American, “I don’t like them,” “they don’t look like they belong here,” “sundown town” attitude to law enforcement. Law enforcement is now protected in deciding without an objective and articulable rationale what an illegal immigrant looks like versus what the markings of a citizen are. The decision justifies and completely unleashes the use of police powers that have led to racial unrest in recent years.
The Supreme Court is not our hope or the place of resistance in this march backward. The court has a checkered history at best. The decisions and decision-makers on the court have not generally been concerned with the higher ideals of law and justice, but simply with protecting the ideological and political framework that the justices come from — and feel they need to protect. And this makes all of us vulnerable and at risk.
Reverend Graylan Scott Hagler is the senior advisor at the Fellowship of Reconciliation–USA, director and chief visionary of Faith Strategies, LLC, and pastor emeritus of Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ.