OPINION: A new theGrio/KFF survey found that 70% of Black voters believe the justices decide cases based on politics and ideology and 51% think the court’s decisions will hurt Black people.
Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more . Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., was Trump’s partner in the effort to shove the court to the right—he ignored long-term Senate norms and blocked consideration of Merrick Garland, a President Obama selection, paving the way for Trump to install three right-wing justices on the court—Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh—which is why we now have a court with six conservatives and three liberals. Now we have an agenda-driven court dominated by ultra-conservative justices.
If it seems like the right wants to shrink rights for women, Blacks, gays and trans people that’s because that notion fits with the right’s ideology. The court now has many “originalists,” i.e. judges who interpret the Constitution based on their understanding of the original intention of the Founding Fathers. It may not appear racist to want to understand and honor the ideas of the founders, but back in 1776, the only people who mattered were straight white men, so, of course, the originalist mindset will center their needs. The world of 1776 didn’t care about Black people, women or the LGBTQ community. The Founding Fathers didn’t think about climate change or massive global corporations or guns with enough firepower to kill many people in seconds. To people from 1776, the world of 2022 would be as foreign as Mars would be to us. It seems crazy to ask us to be governed by a strict interpretation of words written more than 230 years ago. But that’s where we are.
Fighting against Roe was a powerful tool for the right and it motivated their base, but the party may soon realize that rallying people to vote against Roe was more powerful than actually defeating Roe. The majority of Americans did not want Roe to be overturned. TheGrio/KFF poll found that 81% of Black voters disapproved of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. But as of now, it does not appear as though abortion will hurt Republicans in the midterms. Several astute political observers expect Democrats will lose control of the House and the race for the Senate is a dead heat. The Republicans worked long and hard to create a court that would destroy Roe, and even though many Americans disagree with that, there may be no negative political impact on them.
Do you approve or disapprove of the Supreme Court
overturning Roe v. Wade
Even if Democrats somehow deny political gravity and retain control of the House and the Senate, that won’t change the Supreme Court. The court will remain an overpoliticized, right-leaning mess for decades to come, and that will be a source of pain for everyone who’s not a straight white male. Many expect the court to attack gay marriage next. Then perhaps it will go after civil rights. The court is a monster that cannot be stopped and I, for one, truly fear the future that it could create.
About the Survey
The Survey of Black Voters is the first partnership survey between theGrio and KFF, a nonprofit organization focused on research and analysis of health and other national issues. Teams from KFF and theGrio worked together to develop the questionnaire and analyze the data, and both organizations contributed financing for the survey. Each organization is solely responsible for its content.
The survey was conducted Aug. 24–Sept. 5 with a nationally representative, probability-based sample of 1,000 adults who identify as Black or African American and are registered to vote. The sample includes all voters who identify as Black or African American, including those who also identify as Hispanic or multi-racial. The sampling design includes Black registered voters reached online through the SSRS Opinion Panel and the Ipsos KnowledgePanel; to reach Black voters who do not use the internet, additional interviews were conducted by calling back respondents who previously participated in an SSRS Omnibus poll and identified as Black and said they did not use the internet. The combined telephone and panel samples were weighted to match the sample’s demographics to the national U.S. population of Black voters using data from the Census Bureau’s 2020 Current Population Survey (CPS) Voting and Registration supplement. Sampling, data collection, weighting and tabulation were managed by SSRS of Glen Mills, Pennsylvania, in close collaboration with KFF researchers.
The results have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points for results based on the full sample of Black voters. The full methodology and question-wording are available here.
Touré is a host and Creative Director at theGrio. He is the host of the podcast “Toure Show” and the podcast docuseries “Who Was Prince?” He is also the author of seven books including the Prince biography Nothing Compares 2 U. Look out for his upcoming podcast Being Black In the 80s.
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