Postracial Presumptions: The Supreme Court’s Undoing of the Voting Rights Act through Racial Ignorance

Abstract

ABSTRACT To warrant the weakening of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority has actively manufactured ignorance of racism in the realm of voting. Through an analysis of majority opinions in Shelby County v. Holder (2013), Abbott v. Perez (2018), and cases concerning states’ antivoting fraud restrictions, I demonstrate how considerable evidence of racial discrimination is deemed to fail the standard of proof imposed by the court. I offer the term postracial presumption to account for how dominant publics are empowered to reason as if the United States was beyond race, to employ postracial premises to warrant judgments for which there is insufficient evidence and, indeed, for which there is considerable disconfirming evidence. The essay demonstrates how presumption and proof burdens can be critical tools in the study of postracism and is suggestive of how racial ignorance cannot simply be rectified by more proof.