‘This Is No Longer Like Jim Crow, This IS Jim Crow’: Elie Mystal Rails Against Alabama Redistricting Map

MSNBC contributor Elie Mystal claimed that a controversial redistricting map is proof that the era of Jim Crow has retuned to Alabama.

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in favor of keeping in place a redistricting map that a lower court ruled needed to be redrawn.

Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the court’s liberal wing, while five justices argued that a new map would disrupt the coming primary elections.

POLITICO reported,

…Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Samuel Alito signaled that they believed an order from a panel of three federal judges, which required redrawing the state’s congressional districts, would cause too much disruption with primary elections set for May 24 and absentee balloting in those races set to open March 30.

A chief complaint is that the new map gerrymanders Black voters from many of Alabama’s urban areas into a single district.

Mystal joined The ReidOut on Tuesday to discuss the court’s decision with Joy Reid, as did guests Joyce Vance and Deuel Ross.

Reid asked Mystal to weigh in on the decision, and the map, which critics say disadvantages Black voters.

Mystal decried the court’s decision as evidence the state’s segregationist past is back.

“Joy, I don’t know what to tell people,” Mystal said. “This is no longer like Jim Crow. This is Jim Crow.” He continued,

This is what the court did back during the Jim Crow era. My mother is 70-years-old. She was born in 1950 – more than 70-years-old — born in 1950 in Mississippi. She has lived through this. And it’s happening again. And I can’t seem to get people, including Democrats, to care. Because at the end of the day, all the court has to do, all the Supreme Court has to do is to refuse to enforce the 15th Amendment, and apply it against the states. We’ve had laws before. We had the Civil Rights Act of 1870, which made it illegal to discriminate on the basis of race and voting. Did it matter? No. Not when conservatives control the court.

“So as long as you let conservatives control the third branch of government, nothing stops,” Mystal claimed. “Nothing happens. Only the racism is allowed to continue.

“That’s what Brett Kavanaugh did. That’s what Neil Gorsuch did and the other rest of the five of them. And don’t give any credit to your boy John Roberts.”

Watch above, via MSNBC.