Mississippians, especially — and, indeed, all Americans — should know better than to ignore the historical echoes found in recent efforts to dilute minority voting rights.

When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that states cannot draw voting districts solely on the basis of race, Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves immediately called for a special session to redistrict the state Supreme Court districts. The special session seems almost certain to include congressional redistricting, too.

Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann applauded the ruling, saying redistricting based on race “has always been wrong.”

Unless it benefits whites, that is.

Don’t kid yourself: There has never been a time when redistricting in Mississippi wasn’t based on race, mostly to benefit white citizens to the detriment of its Black citizens.

Today, many cast this return to more restrictive voting laws as a matter of “fairness” and “equality” rather than what it represents: a continuous erosion of the protections established during the Civil Rights era. This trend gained significant momentum in 2013 with the removal of federal preclearance requirements, which once served as a vital guardrail against localized discrimination.

Since 2013, states have passed nearly 100 restrictive voting laws after this guardrail was removed. Wednesday is simply the latest step along the path to an American apartheid.

When Mississippi Republicans use sanitized language to describe these overt efforts to weaken Black voting strength, those who know our state’s regrettable history are not deceived. What’s happening now is a sequel.

When drafting the 1890 Constitution and subsequent Jim Crow statutes, Mississippi legislators were remarkably clever — and often quite blunt — in their choice of language. They operated with a dual-track vocabulary: one for the official legal record — the words “colored” and “Negro” and any other word to describe Black people do not appear even once in the official legal record — and another for public political speeches used to rally white support.

Mississippi leaders have long relied on “colorblind” language in legislation to bypass federal scrutiny while achieving discriminatory ends. Now they don’t even have to pretend, although many fear saying what they actually mean for fear of being rightfully called racists.

So you’ll hear those in power in this state refer to anything but the obvious.

State Auditor Shad White has openly called for redistricting for the sole purpose of removing the state’s only U.S. Black representative, Bennie Thompson, from office. State Sen. Kevin Blackwell, a Republican from Southaven, said it is time to “erase” Thompson’s district.

White and Blackwell confirm what we all should have known for years: You cannot separate race from politics in this state. It’s always been that way.

This decision is dangerous in another way as well.

It holds that districts can be redrawn based on political affiliation, a precedent that carries nationwide implications. By allowing redistricting based on partisan politics, the court risks ensuring that extremists in both parties gain disproportionate power. This shift threatens to silence voices of reason and conscientious objection across the entire American political landscape. It institutionalizes extremist polarization.

What I would ask our legislators before they head to the special session is this: “Is our state better off with less Black representation in the state with the highest percentage of Black citizens in the nation? Is that “fair?” Is that “equality?”

I’m through with threading the needle between innocent intent and racist outcomes. If what someone does leads to a racist result, there is no distinction to be made. That person, for all practical purposes, is a racist.

If, as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice, the names of people like Tate Reeves, Shad White, Kevin Blackwell and Delbert Hosemann will one day join those of Theodore Bilbo, James Vardaman and Ross Barnett in Mississippi’s Racism Hall of Fame.

The question before our local delegation of Republican legislators — Sens. Chuck Younger and Bart Williams, and Reps. Dana McLean, Andy Gibson and Rob Roberson — is whether they want to be on that list, too. How they vote on redistricting will tell us.

The Supreme Court’s ruling doesn’t just impact one state; it clears a path for a broader regression in representation that mirrors some of the darkest chapters of our shared history.

Deep down, surely Mississippians know better.

Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].

Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].