I stayed up late two nights ago hoping for news of the resolution to Senator Wendy Davis’s courageous filibuster against current Republican attempts to shut down most of Texas’s abortion clinics. But it was morning before I learned that she had actually succeeded, with the help of a gallery full of supporters. Of course Texas Lieutenant Governor, David Dewhurst, was quick to claim that the solemn proceedings of the august body over which he presides had been disrupted by a mob, and to promise to fight another day (in a new special session already called by Texas Governor Rick Perry).

My Facebook news feed remains full of celebration of Senator Davis and of the Supreme Court’s decision striking down the Defense of Marriage Act, of which more later. But Senator Davis, though she has become a new national celebrity as photos of her pink shoes have gone viral on the Internet, may need to seek other public office than the seat in the Texas Senate she now holds. Voter suppression legislation, that Texas enacted just hours after yesterday’s Supreme Court decision striking down part of the historic Voting Rights Act of 1965, redraws the Texas Legislative map in a way that effectively destroys Davis’s district.

The predictable Antonin Scalia has been widely noted, as he seemingly felt obliged to vent about his colleagues’ legitimation of “homosexual sodomy.” Declaring that he feels personally (and unfairly) stigmatized by the DOMA decision, Justice Scalia registered his discomfort at being thought a bigot. The very kindest thing that can be said about the good Justice, though, is that he is on the wrong side of this issue and the wrong side of history. Of course, his church is equally on the wrong side and entirely disingenuous in its official expressions of discomfort. Scalia is not disingenuous, just extreme. As a sidebar, the St. Louis Post Dispatch yesterday carried an op-ed piece by St. Louis Archbishop Robert Carlson again claiming that the Affordable Care Act infringes upon Catholic religious freedom.

I’m not hopeful about the voting rights issues. I do not think Justice Roberts’s claim that race no longer counts in our national politics is naive. I think it is calculated. Justice Roberts is surely aware that his court’s decision to weaken the voting rights act is as blatant an intervention into electoral politics as was Bush v. Gore. He is surely aware as well that present Republican strategy relies heavily upon attempts to disenfranchise minority, female, student, and elderly voters who tend to favor Democratic candidates. Republicans have hardly been secretive about this aim.

The conservative punditry are singing the praises of the voting rights decision, ignoring the fact that voter ID laws, which conservatives favor, aim to destroy the very success they (and Justice Roberts) claim that the Voting Rights act has achieved. Over the past several years voter protection groups, the League of Women Voters, and others have achieved some success in combatting voter suppression through legal means. Now much of this will have to be re-litigated. Reactionary state legislatures, Texas, Mississippi, Florida, North Carolina, and others are already announcing readiness to enact and/or reaffirm repressive new laws designed to disenfranchise voters who tend to vote for democrats. The Texas law, hurriedly announced by state Attorney General, Greg Abbott, has already been challenged legally. In states outside the South, such as my own state of Missouri, voter suppression has been given a new impetus.

The Roberts argument about race is grounded in the color-blind ideology (so-called) of aversive racism. It will be interesting to see how all these things play out in the next few weeks as the radical right seeks to express its belief in its own entitlement through voter suppression and liberals and progressives attempt to counter it. I don’t, myself, think we’re that far removed these days from the politics of Bull Connor. Blacks, Hispanics, and now people who look Muslim or have Muslim sounding names, are routinely targeted, beaten, and harrassed by police. Race and class-based repression are not localized in the South or directed solely at black people these days, but then they never were. Minorities are routinely subjected to selective law enforcement, including the death penalty. Our incarceration rate remains the highest in the world, with minorities overrepresented among our incarcerated populations. Texas has just completed its 500th execution since 1976, its eighth so far this year, executing Kimberly McCarthy, a black woman convicted by a jury that escaped being all white by including one black member. A good case can be made that we are not only resegregating our country, but rebarbarizing it as well.