You can’t escape your party’s racial agenda, NC Republicans | Opinion

Voting scholar Jasmine Carrera Smith has written that the Supreme Court’s Callais decision will likely “end multiracial democracy in the South.” Potential electoral scenarios she reviewed, after the gutting of the Voting Rights Act, suggest that “the future of minority representation could look much like the dominance of a one-party South” that existed before 1965. Many former Confederate states apparently agree — as they rush to demolish Black representation with un-deliberated speed.

It reminds me of North Carolina Republicans’ exuberance the first time Chief Justice Roberts attacked the VRA in the Shelby County case (2013). With pre-clearance ended, Republican Sen. Tom Apodaca exploded: “So now we can go with the full bill.” The green light had been given to racial discrimination in elections because life had “changed” in the South. We’d overcome.

One could have wished that the Tar Heel State would have resisted the clarion call for White people’s government this time around. Instead, we pre-gamed – re-redistricting to get rid of Rep. Don Davis even before Callais was handed down, because Donald Trump told us to. I’m not sure much could be more horrifying than to take instruction on racial justice from the present president of the United States. Republicans must beam at his declarations of “low IQ” politicians, “shithole countries”, and “good people on both sides” in Charlottesville.

We witness our history close hand in the American South. The largest mark – by every conceivable measure – of our story is racial oppression. It forged our past, it dictates our present, and, it seems, many, or maybe even most of us, are anxious to embrace its future. In a flash, pluralist democracy can be dealt a lethal blow. Oh, to re-enter the 1950s. They must have been something. I fear we may find out. They’ll be bloodier the second time.

What surprises me most about our resurgent racialized agenda is that we can be so fully committed to it and, at the same time, be completely, stubbornly, insistent that it doesn’t exist. It is the sin that should guide but not be named. We’re not heathens after all. We’re not Lester Maddox or George Wallace or even Jesse Helms. Our clinging to White supremacy is more genteel than it was generations or centuries ago. This isn’t the Wilmington of 1898, or the Greensboro of 1960, or even 1979. We’re civilized after all. Many of us claim to be evangelicals.

Not all North Carolina Republicans are bleak-hearted, malice-driven, racialists. Some are. But not most. Others are rich folks who think they’ll prosper even more profoundly, in the world’s most economically unequal society, if they do partnership with a racialized agenda. Others are libertarian sorts who proclaim to be immune from history or obligation or commonwealth. Tons are purported Christians who, amazingly, think Jesus crusaded for guns, tax breaks and European cultural ascendancy. And many are just sure they want to own the libs. So they join hands with more overtly malevolent forces.

But in 2026, under the frightening specter of Trumpism, these varied partners, these teammates, are all moral equivalents. Whether they act in spite or merely link arms, and thereby benefit from, the energies and stratagems of those who do. All work to destroy the American promise. All reject the notion of justice for all. All cast aside the Declaration and scoff at the Gettysburg Address. All detest the notion that our brothers and sisters are children of God. As a result, all invite shame.

Contributing columnist Gene Nichol is a professor of law at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.