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In one of the more anticipated decisions of this term, the Supreme Court (6-3 on ideological lines) has struck down the second Louisiana majority-black district. They did not rule categorically that race may not be used as a factor in redistricting decisions, but they did rule that if a redistricting decision could be explained by a partisan gerrymander rather than a racial one, there was no case.
In practice, if taken seriously by lower courts, this pretty much destroys nearly all Section 2 Voting Rights Act cases, because of the strong affiliation between blacks and the Democratic Party.
I am a bit of two minds about this. The Voting Rights Act seems like a band-aid solution, and if this SCOTUS is fond of one thing, it is ripping off liberal band-aids.
But even a quokka (did I use that term right?) in an ivory tower like me who would prefer color-blind policies can see that there is a big narrative difference between 'a third of Louisiana voted for Democrats and not win a single Representative' and 'the Blacks of Louisiana overwhelmingly voted for Democrats, and yet did not get a single Representative who is Black or a Democrat'. Both are bad, but the Blacks are a much more coherent group than people who vote for Democrats. You don't know if your coworker voted for Democrats, but you can certainly make an educated guess about their racial identification.
Democracy works pretty well compared to other political systems by convincing people dissatisfied with the status quo that that they can change things within the system, but it requires a widespread belief that the playing field is at least somewhat level. If you tell a peasant in an absolute monarchy 'if you have policy suggestions, simply become a great knight, accomplish heroic deeds until the king offers you the hand of his daughter and you inherit the kingdom', he will object that this seems very unlikely to work outside fairy tales and decide to try to use pitchforks to campaign for policy changes instead.
As an intuition pump, consider states worth 300 EC votes using state legislatures to pool their electors and award them to the winner of the overall popular vote over these states, effectively forming a single superstate for the purpose of presidential elections. Suppose Louisiana is not part of that block. How would Louisianans feel about this arrangement? Would they go "How other states assign their EC votes does not affect Louisiana", or would they declare "With this setup, the votes of us will never affect the outcome of presidential elections, ergo whoever gets elected is not our president".
I think the root of the problem is that states are competing for national attention, and doing the sane thing and awarding EC votes or Representatives in proportion to the state-wide vote will guarantee that a state will not be worth fighting over. If Colorado decided to do that, national parties would just ignore it completely. "To win one measly EC vote through campaigning, I would need to convince another 10% of their population to vote for me instead of the other guy? Hard pass."
Instead, it is the interests of states to be battleground states. "Half of our voters prefer Democrats, and half Republicans. The tiniest margin will decide who gets all of our EC votes and Representatives. So you better try hard to send gifts our way to convince the marginal voter to prefer you."
If doing the sane and stable thing leads to you being ignored and borderline flip-flopping makes you the center of attention, then states will behave as if they had BPD.
I can understand this perspective somewhat, but I struggle to see how to decide which groups are considered important for this purpose doesn't either end up a complete clusterfuck or worse, vindicates the ethnonationalists' fears of the inevitability of multicultural spoils systems. There is also even plenty of examples where it works out the other way around - special interest minorities who care a lot about an issue and coordinate well reliably outcompete even much larger majorities if those don't care enough, through a combination of lawfare, lobbying and (local) special elections.
I think a large problem is also the centralisation of power in most western countries. Politics is often better the more local it is since the problems of one place are rarely the problems of another. Europe is, as usual, even worse on this account, since a lot of power got shifted into the EU which is at best difficult to understand for the average citizen, and at worst employs committees and courts that are entirely out of the citizens reach. Not that central politics is entirely bad, it has an important place especially for large-scale international trading, warfare or diplomacy. But this is often piggybacked unto for much more general power, and nobody ever lets go once granted.
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