FRIDAY, MAY 15, 2026
But it won't be reduced like that: What will happen to Black membership in the House in the wake of Louisiana v. Callais?
Before we offer a current estimate, let's recall where membership stood at the start of the current Congress. This report, from Spectrum News, appeared in January 2025:
A record 67 Black lawmakers are serving in the 119th Congress—a four-fold increase since 1975.
The number represents a historic milestone since the first Black member of Congress, Sen. Hiram Revels of Mississippi, was elected in 1869. Black representation in Congress rose during Reconstruction, fell during the Jim Crow era, then grew through the 20th century due in part to the civil rights movement and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
The 67 total Black members of Congress in 2025 include 62 Democrats and five Republicans.
The five Republicans serving on Capitol Hill—four in the House and one in the Senate—match the number in the last session of Congress and also represent the most since Reconstruction.
Let's be clear on the overall numbers. Five of those 67 members were (and still are) members of the Senate. As the current Congress started, there were 62 Black members of the House—58 Democrats, but also four Republicans.
How will those numbers be affected by the scramble to eliminate majority Black congressional districts in the wake of the Callais decision? In this recent news report, NBC News reported a current estimate:
Democrats warn a third of the Congressional Black Caucus could be wiped out by redistricting wars
The Congressional Black Caucus, a power center in the Democratic Party for decades, saw its membership rise this Congress to an all-time high of 58 House members.
Now, thanks to a Supreme Court redistricting ruling that’s expected to dramatically diminish Black representation on Capitol Hill, the CBC is fighting a five-alarm fire that could devastate its membership.
CBC Chair Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., said as many as 19 of the caucus’ members could be affected by the redistricting wars in a worst-case scenario, though she noted it’s still fluid given that states are still drawing new maps in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling.
“It’s devastating. People have sacrificed so much to make this a more perfect union. And here we are, in 2026, seeing this massive regression in all the gains that have been made. It’s painful,” Clarke told NBC News on Tuesday.
So goes that early estimate. "As many as 19 Democratic members could be affected," Rep. Clarke said.
For the record, several of the original Democratic 58 have died or have resigned. Three more have announced that they'll be retiring at the end of their current terms.
(Two of the Republican members—Reps. Donalds and James—are the likely GOP nominees in gubernatorial races in Florida and Michigan. Throw in a retirement and an unsuccessful Senate run in Texas and none of the four Republican members will be back next year.)
Almost surely, there will be fewer Black members in the House next year. As is almost always the rule, overstatements have followed.
“It’s Jim Crow 2.0,” Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) is quoted saying in the NBC News report. Thompson is quoted saying that the Callais decision “potentially takes us back 60 years.”
Derrick Johnson, president of the NAACP, is also quoted calling the situation "a new form of Jim Crow."
For the record, Rep. Thompson's calculation is almost surely wrong. Sixty years ago, there were only six Black members in the House!
Whatever you think of the Callais ruling, it won't be taking those numbers back to where they stood in 1965, or to anything close to that number. But that's the way the discourse routinely goes within our rapidly failing nation, even among us Blues.
The number won't be that small, but the number will almost surely be smaller. As to how we got from there to here—as to how we got from six Black House members up to 62—we'll refer you to Carl Hulse's recent retrospective piece in the New York Times.
How did we ever get this far? Also, what explains the way those numbers grew in the aftermath of the Voting Rights Act?
As we noted yesterday, Jamelle Bouie laid out the numbers, and the timeline recording their growth, in this recent New York Times column:
John Roberts Believes in an America That Doesn’t Exist
[...]
[I]t took a major amendment to the Voting Rights Act and a Supreme Court decision to give Black Americans the opportunity to win more than token representation in Congress. In 1982, Congress reauthorized and amended the V.R.A. to combat disparate impact in voting and electoral outcomes. Four years later, in 1986, a unanimous Supreme Court declared that the Voting Rights Act forbade voting schemes that impaired the ability of “cohesive” groups of language or minority groups to “participate equally in the political process and to elect candidates of their choice.” Following this decision, states across the country—especially in the South—used the 1990 census and redistricting to create majority-minority state legislative and congressional districts where Black voters could elevate Black lawmakers and officials to federal office.
At the 10th anniversary of the [Voting Rights Act] in 1975, there were 17 Black members of Congress, up from six in 1965. All but one of them served in the House of Representatives. At the 20th anniversary in 1985, there were still only 20 Black Americans in the House (and none in the Senate). By 1995, however, there were 43 Black Americans serving as voting members of Congress, including one senator, Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois. This, even after the Democratic Party suffered its largest congressional defeat of the postwar era.
After that major amendment to the VRA, the numbers substantially grew. More specifically, majority- minority House districts were formed in the redistricting which followed the 1990 census.
This raises a bit of a question:
Who was responsible for the creation of those new districts? Were Democratic legislatures creating those districts Were Republicans joining in?
Was this some sort of different age? Was this the dawning of an age in which the two parties chose to link hands to let a thousand flowers bloom?
In this recent report in the New York Times, Carl Hulse explores that general question—and as was understood at the time, it wasn't quite as simple as that! In his recent retrospective, Hulse describes the political trade-offs which were involved as this remarkable change occurred.
It's hard to imagine the current era without that impressive growth in Black congressional membership—a change which made the House of Representatives "look [much] more like America."
It's hard to imagine the current era without that significant change. We ourselves have always lived in a (naturally occurring) majority minority district—a district in which we've been represented by Kweisi Mfume and the late Elijah Cummings, with an earlier tenure by Rep. Parren J. Mitchell added in.
(They were "princes and princesses." That's what the late Rep. Mitchell would always tell the children at the Baltimore City elementary school where we were teaching fifth graders back at the start of the era. Unfailingly, he would deliver those words of affirmation, during a challenging time.)
As these things go, we've been lucky in the quality of the people we've been able to vote for. That said, Hulse describes the political complexities involved in the creation of those majority minority districts in places where "racial gerrymandering" was required to create such congressional maps.
He also describes the long, slow, steady political change in which the Republican Party took political control of the "Solid South" and seems to have acquired substantial control over the electoral map.
There were tradeoffs involved in the gerrymandering which produced the larger numbers we have described. Based on an unusual comment Rep. Clyburn recently made, such tradeoffs may even live on today!
We want to walk you through the political history recalled in Hulse's report. We also want to tell you what we saw and heard on Velshi last weekend—what we saw and heard when the Harvard professor and the Princeton professor spoke with the (highly capable) rising star Harvard grad.
All three of those people are good, decent people. Rep. Thompson is a good, decent person as well.
That said, we aren't going back to 1965, and this isn't Jim Crow all over again. The numbers will be down next year. But they won't be down like that
We aren't going back to 1965, and this isn't Jim Crow again! We Blues! Do we know how we look to other people when we refuse to stop making such claims?
Tomorrow: We'll have to move fast to cram it all in.
On Monday morning, we expect to move on to the annals of headlong decline.
"As is almost always the rule, overstatements have followed."
ReplyDeleteThis is an example of Somerby's bias. If he automatically considers whatever a response will be as an "overstatement" then he is not being fairminded. In this case, he is assuming that Democratic response to the decrease in black representation in Congress will be an overstatement, without giving actual thought to what that response is.
Somerby then quotes Bennie Thompson, conveniently leaving out his hedge word "potentially". Somerby doesn't know what the effect of the gerrymanders will be and neither does Thompson, so that word "potentially" is important. Thompson's phrase Jim Crow 2.0 is accurate no matter how many black legislators are lost, because it is the effort to reduce black participation in Congress that makes this 2.0, not the return to the same small number as in 1965.
Meanwhile, Trump has announced a new sculpture garden to be built along the Potomac on a stretch of land he calls completely BARREN (his word and his caps), that just happens to be where the MLK Jr. monument is located. Anyone who says this isn't a deliberate, racially motivated attack on black civil rights is part of the racist attack on black Americans. Somerby included.
How can this obvious racism on the right be overstated?
"We want to walk you through the political history recalled in Hulse's report. We also want to tell you what we saw and heard on Velshi last weekend—what we saw and heard when the Harvard professor and the Princeton professor spoke with the (highly capable) rising star Harvard grad. "
ReplyDeleteWould it kill Somerby to include the names of the people he is planning to discuss, instead of referring to them by the schools they taught at (or attended)? This is unnecessarily obscure. Yes, we can go look it up, but why should we have to? This kind of coy tease is one of the annoying aspects of Somerby's refusal to be direct and clear in his writing. It isn't clever. It isn't amusing. It is just annoying.
"We aren't going back to 1965, and this isn't Jim Crow again!"
ReplyDeleteHow does Somerby know this? What justifies repeating it several times, when he cannot know this for sure the first time he says it?
This is a time of renewed blatant racism and violence against black people and other minorities. It is also a time of renewed attacks against progress by women, firing of those who have attained responsible jobs and roll back of DEI. How is that not a new Jim Crow? What would stop a return to conditions in 1965? Not Trump. Not Republicans. They are emboldened by their success and rushing to complete their attacks before Trump's term ends or Democrats take back the majority in Congress. Somerby can see the motive to harm black prospects as clearly as the rest of us and he has no basis whatsoever for saying he knows how far it will go or when it will stop.
There are men in Trump's administration and elected Republicans in Congress who are calling for women to lose the vote too. Is that overstatement to point that out? Somerby is a complacent white man whose own privileges are not being threatened. He has no standing to tell black people and other minorities (immigrant Dreamers being sent to the Congo) that they are getting too excited about backsliding as Republicans try to grab their civil rights.
ReplyDelete"As these things go, we've been lucky in the quality of the people we've been able to vote for. "
ReplyDeleteSomerby says he lives in a majority minority district that has elected black representatives. The way he phrases it, it sounds as if Republicans were not allowed on the ballot at all. That is not what happens in such districts. There is the same ability to vote for a Republican as for a Democrat, regardless of the race of the winner in a given year. Even in Baltimore, Republicans could offer black candidates that might attract black voters, if they were serious about having a chance in a black district.
Somerby's way of discussing this also talks oddly about how the districts are "created." It isn't as if Democrats were telling black people where to live, ordering them to move to different locations. People decide where to live. Historically, black neighborhoods have been created by real estate redlining in which white people refuse to integrate white neighborhoods by selling to black buyers. But it is the boundaries that shift for districts, not the people themselves. As it is said, the politicians choose their voters, not vice versa, with gerrymandering. If districts were drawn along the lines of demographic neighborhoods, there would be natural black districts because there exist natural black neighborhoods and communities. Those places surely deserve to have their own representation as much as white communities do. Somerby ignores the existence of such places, as surely as he does not live in a black neighborhood himself. He lives in a district formed by predominantly black neighborhooods, just as he was hired to teach in predominantly black schools. He himself lives in a trendy white area too small to be its own district. I suppose he is complaining because his own neighborhood was not gerrymandered into a white district. But that is what suburbs and white flight were about.
We live in a digital age where districts could be formed based on race, religion, ancestry or ethnicity, age, income level, rather than geographically. As has been noted, that might exclude neighbors banding together to address shared local community concerns, but it would eliminate one race from ganging up on another, or men trying to subjugate women, or the wealthy buying privileges along with funding candidates. As Somerby points out, trade-offs happen.
Somerby's innuendo is that black people want to go back on their tradeoffs now in order to acquire more seats in Congress, as if it isn't Republican reneging on their deals. Somerby also hints that the South is majority Republican and thus should be allowed to dominate unfortunate black people who live there (due to historical reasons).
Republicans have gained power via the entry to money into political races. We need to change the Citizens United deal and prevent billionaires and corporations from giving Republicans the ability to cement political power by disenfranchising black people in the South (and elsewhere). That excess money gave us Trump and now Trump is giving racists political power. That is the problem, not some technical complexity involving redistricting. It is the same reason the Republicans can elect someone like Trump by manipulating the electoral college instead of via popular vote. He lost to Hillary by 3 million votes nationwide. These oddities of our electoral system exist because of slavery and they need to be revised by Congress, but that cannot help if those same slave states are now preventing Democrats from being elected. Suppression of black voting is a step toward keeping Republicans from rigging the system in their own favor. There is nothing fair about any of it given that they cannot win elections without cheating.
Typo correction: Suppression of black voting is a step toward Reublicans rigging the system in their own favor.
Delete"We Blues! Do we know how we look to other people when we refuse to stop making such claims?"
ReplyDeleteSomerby disagrees with how Democrats see our political situation, social issues, and many other aspects of national problems. That should be his clue that he is not one of "We Blues" but a right winger. He needs to go join those Others whose worldview he shares, not chide us while pretending he has any affinity with our party.
We Blues are not going to surrender our political perspective in order to "understand" the right better -- how we appear to others, as Somerby puts it. Those "other people" are wrong, in my opinion. They are entitled to their views on every topic, and they are not shy about calling We Blues ugly names. They are the all-against-all fighters as they pursue their self-interest without regard for anything else. We don't want to be them and we don't want them to vote for us, take over our party, remake us in their own image. We want to be us because we think our way is better than theirs. Somerby is welcome to go join those Red Americans, buy a few guns, ban books in his local schools, let Epstein off the hook, make Canada into another state, and chase everyone with brown skin off their blocks.
Somerby never cares how We Blues would look to our existing constituents if we suddenly shifted to appeal to those Other People who Somerby considers more important? We Blues have worked hard to understand and address racial bias in our society, with considerable progress that those Other People have tried to undo. Why would we want more of that to happen? We Blues vote for our Blue candidates in order to advance the very things that Somerby is against -- racial progress, full civil rights for minorities and women, greater financial equality, union and worker rights, environmental protection, mitigating global warming, maintaining peaceful relations with other countries, improving the health, education and living conditions of ALL people in the USA (yes, including those in the South, whether they want it or not). If we don't look like that to Other People, they are not paying attention and that is their problem. We have sufficient voters to achieve our policies, as long as elections are not controlled by the wealthy.
"The numbers will be down next year. But they won't be down like that"
ReplyDeleteOh, well that's all right then. Nothing to see here. No need for concern. Go about your business.
Why should Somerby care? He isn't black. He isn't female. He isn't a recent immigrant or even likely to be redeported back to Ireland for his ancestors' sins. He has his inheritance to live on, and whatever the right is paying him for his "influencing" here. Why should he care about black people having the right to vote, or hold jobs, or participate in law-making. Somerby clearly doesn't care about anyone but those Other People whose approval he is seeking. White people with money.
Boston Irish have a long tradition of racial bigotry. Then Somerby tried to become an honorary Southerner to fit in with his roomies at Harvard. He moved to the Northernmost Confederate state (Maryland) and tried to teach disadvantaged black children equipped with nothing but enthusiasm (if he had even that), acquiring negative attitudes toward education and the kids he was sent to help. Now he is a full-fledged bigot who considers his own views to be the right and natural way to think about our racial history. He has not bothered to educate himself on the topic, so he considers Blue views off-putting and distorted.
DeleteYou don't learn to understand others by adopting their distorted perspectives. Somerby might start by reading Isabel Wilkerson's book "Caste." Then he might begin to understand Blues and why civil rights and racial equality are important to us. He is so immersed in white Southern attitudes that he has no idea how to be Blue.
That snotty remark about a politician calling black children Princes and Princesses is an example. Somerby is an awful person, in my opinion, and it irritates me every time he claims membership in our political party, especially since I cannot imagine him ever voting for Kamala Harris (especially against Trump, who shares his own racial attitudes). Harris may run again -- she is polling #1 in potential candidates for 2028, ahead of Gavin Newsom. If Somerby cannot support her, he has nothing to say to Blue America about race.
Millions left the Democrat party because of he-him faggotry and racist George Floyd riots.
ReplyDeleteAnd that's how Biden won?
DeleteInterior Secretary Doug Burgum stated that the Department of the Interior will appeal a federal court order that blocked his agency from enforcing policies that delayed wind and solar projects. During a House Natural Resources Committee hearing, Burgum criticized the judge's injunction as "absurd" and refused to commit to complying while the appeal proceeds.
ReplyDeleteBecause fuck us, what the fuck are we going to do about it? Continue paying higher energy bills and watch China lead the world in renewable energy. What the fuck is wrong with these people!