Initial thoughts at least vaguely inspired by today's decision to keep sec 5 (pre-clearance) but invalidate sec 4 (who's subject to pre-clearance).
It's without doubt that a lot has improved in nearly 50 years. It's without doubt that there is still racism out there; prejudice will likely always exist (not that that makes it okay). These things should be acknowledged, but they're not central to what I'm focused on right now.
It seems to me that "tilting" election laws for racial reasons is pretty well on its last legs. The generations that experienced a time when it was perfectly acceptable to express clearly racist opinions are aging rapidly now and will soon be dead or consigned to old fogey-dom.
Election law tinkering is very real, but it's pretty exclusively done for partisan political advantage. That set of motivations may have disparate racial impacts, but that's not the primary intent. The intent is to keep "our guys" in office rather than "their guys". But you know what? It's still wrong to "game" the system even if your motives are less despicable.
