The myth of linear racial progress actively legitimizes dismantling equality protections.

Evidence

This popular construct of racial progress does more than conceal and obfuscate; it actually undermines the effort to achieve and maintain equality. You can see this in the majority opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts in Shelby County v. Holder in 2013. In that case, the Supreme Court struck down the federal preclearance section of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which required certain states and counties with a history of electoral racism to receive federal approval before changing local voting laws or practices. In his majority opinion, Roberts acknowledged that there had been a need for “strong medicine” against racism in 1965 but argued that since then, progress had rendered such policies unnecessary. “There is no denying, however, that the conditions that originally justified these measures no longer characterize voting in the covered jurisdictions,” he wrote. “Things have changed dramatically.” — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 1244

Categorization

• SEED: Possible essay angle: how the progress-march frame supplied the legal logic for Shelby County — the ‘things have changed’ argument is itself a product of the origin story the book contests.
• XREF: Concrete instance of the reader’s ‘deviation vs. design’ frame: Roberts treats racism as deviation now past rather than design built in.