The Voting Rights Act didn’t fail–the country abandoned its moral commitment to it

By: Anneshia Hardy

There is a dangerous narrative taking shape in this country right now, one suggesting that the Voting Rights Act simply outlived its usefulness. That the protections once necessary during the Civil Rights era are now outdated remnants of a different America. That the country evolved beyond the conditions that made federal oversight necessary in the first place.

But both history and the present tell a far more troubling story.

The Voting Rights Act did not fail. The country abandoned its moral commitment to it. That distinction matters because framing the current crisis as a “failure” of the Voting Rights Act obscures what actually happened. For decades, the law worked exactly as intended because it recognized an uncomfortable truth America still struggles to confront: when left unchecked, political systems and those who benefit from unequal power structures adapt in order to preserve that power.

The Voting Rights Act understood that racial discrimination in voting would not simply disappear because Congress passed legislation or because the country congratulated itself for progress. It understood that exclusion evolves. When literacy tests became illegal, new barriers emerged. When poll taxes were struck down, district lines became weapons. When openly segregationist language became politically toxic, lawmakers learned to repackage exclusion in the softer language of “election integrity,” “states’ rights” and “race neutrality.” The strategy changed. The objective did not. 

That is why preclearance under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act mattered so deeply. It required jurisdictions with documented histories of racial discrimination to receive federal approval before changing voting laws. It was not punitive. It was preventative. And for decades, it worked. But in 2013, the Supreme Court’s decision in Shelby County v. Holder gutted the coverage formula that made preclearance enforceable. The Court argued that the country had changed enough that such protections were no longer necessary. What followed should have shattered the illusion of a “post-racial” democracy. Instead, we witnessed voter purges, polling place closures concentrated in Black communities, attacks on absentee voting, racial gerrymandering battles and legislation across Southern states making democratic participation harder and more fragile.

Now, more than a decade after Shelby, we are watching another escalation unfold in real time.

The recent ruling in Louisiana v. Callais threatens to further weaken protections for Black political representation under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. At the same time, states across the South are advancing voting-related bills under the banner of election security. But beneath the procedural language is something far more consequential: a restructuring of democratic access and representation. And the country should be paying close attention. Because what is happening in the South is not isolated regional politics. It is a warning sign for American democracy itself.

Historically, the South has functioned as both the country’s contradiction and its testing ground. Modern voter suppression strategies were refined there before spreading elsewhere. Today, the region is once again becoming the laboratory for determining how much democratic erosion the public is willing to normalize. And normalization is the real danger.

Because democracy rarely disappears all at once. It erodes through exhaustion, procedural chaos, legal ambiguity and administrative barriers that appear technical enough to avoid moral scrutiny. It erodes when communities begin to feel their participation no longer matters. It erodes when the public becomes more invested in the performance of democracy than its actual practice. Many Americans only recognize voter suppression when it arrives dressed in the imagery of the past. They search for firehoses, literacy tests and segregation signs while overlooking the quieter bureaucratic mechanisms capable of producing the same democratic outcomes. That selective recognition is produced by historical amnesia.

America remembers the Civil Rights Movement as a story about courage while refusing to fully remember what made that courage necessary in the first place. We celebrate Selma. We quote Dr. King. We repost black-and-white photographs of marchers crossing bridges in pursuit of freedom and democracy. But many of the same institutions that publicly honor that history continue resisting the unfinished demands that movement fought for.

As America approaches its 250th anniversary, we have become a nation deeply committed to commemorating civil rights history while simultaneously weakening the mechanisms designed to protect its gains. Historical memory without historical accountability becomes nostalgia, not justice.

And that nostalgia has allowed the country to stabilize a dangerous fiction: that racism is primarily historical rather than structural. We now live in a political climate where race-conscious protections are portrayed as threats to democracy while policies producing racially unequal outcomes are framed as neutral governance. That is not evidence that racism disappeared. It is evidence that the language surrounding democracy evolved while many of the underlying power struggles remained intact.

Progress in this country has never happened automatically. Every meaningful expansion of democracy required organizing, pressure, sacrifice, resistance and federal intervention. Voting rights are ultimately about power. Material power. Political power. Community power. And Black political power has consistently pushed this country closer to its democratic ideals, not further from them.

The question before the country now is not whether the Voting Rights Act worked. History already answered that. The real question is whether America still possesses the moral courage to defend the democratic principles it claims to celebrate.

Because preserving democracy requires more than memorializing the past. It requires confronting the present. And right now, too many institutions remain unwilling to do that.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the writer and not necessarily those of the AFRO.

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