I was born, educated and live in Arkansas. Recently, white legislators in Arkansas responsible for redrawing voting districts in ways that fracture communities of Black and Latinx voters expressed dismay when Black and Latinx leaders denounced the re-drawn districts as racially discriminatory. The architects of the re-drawn districts deny they intended to discriminate against Black and Latinx voters.
Wendell Griffen
Arkansas state Sen. Jane English, a Republican from North Little Rock, sponsored a redistricting plan that divides Pulaski County — where I have lived and worked since 1979 — into three congressional districts. According to the Arkansas Times, English claimed she did not know the plan she sponsored broke part of North Little Rock into separate congressional districts. English also claimed she did not know the redistricting map she sponsored, which split part of North Little Rock — where she lives — affected a community of voters that predominantly is not white.
Arkansas state Rep. Nelda Speaks, a Republican from Mountain Home in Baxter County, initially proposed a redistricting map that did not split any county. She later joined English in co-sponsoring the map that split Pulaski County, the county with the largest population of Black and Latinx residents. During final debate on the vote to approve that map, Speaks claimed no city in Pulaski County was split.
In fact, the map English and Speaks co-sponsored divides voters in two Pulaski County municipalities — Little Rock and North Little Rock.
More than baloney, a lie
Max Brantley of the Arkansas Times did not mince words about why white Republican legislators split the largest community of Black and Latinx residents:
The reason English had to TAKE majority-minority population from Pulaski County was that the English bill ADDED majority-white Cleburne County’s 25,000 people to a district. The only way to achieve balance in redistricting was by first adding then subtracting Black people from Pulaski? Please.
The Republicans did this 1) to punish Pulaski and 2) because they could.
Any other excuse is baloney. More precisely in the case of those who know the score, a lie.
Brantley is correct in calling the Republican re-districting plan for Arkansas a lie. He also is correct in concluding the re-districting plan was crafted to punish Pulaski County, home of the largest population of Black and Latinx residents in Arkansas, who typically favor Democratic candidates. However, Brantley and other political observers have yet to point out two other obvious truths.
The company they keep
Jane English
First, the Republican re-districting plan for Arkansas is promoted by white religious nationalists who call themselves “Christians” but who I term “the hateful faithful.” Jane English, Nelda Speaks and the other Arkansas legislators who voted for the re-districting plan that splits Pulaski County into three congressional districts and fractures the Black and Latinx voting population claim to be followers of Jesus.
Their moral, social and political outlook is shared by white religious nationalists who voted overwhelmingly to elect Donald Trump president of the United States in 2016.
Their moral, social and political outlook is shared by white religious nationalists who are offended by calls to remove statues of white people who championed and defended enslavement of Black people.
Their moral, social and political outlook is shared by white religious nationalists who have carried on a culture war against civil rights laws, laws that outlaw discrimination against Black, Latinx, LGTBTQI, immigrant, women and working people for generations.
The fiction of democracy
Second, the “hateful faithful” are the most fervent and disciplined foot soldiers in a deliberate and well-financed scheme to preserve the fiction of democracy in the United States. This fiction decides presidential elections based on the slaveholder-based Electoral College scheme. Republican state legislators are desperate to prevent Black, Latinx, LGBTQI, women, and anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-homophobic, anti-transphobic, anti-imperialist and anti-xenophobic people from voting.
Nelda Speaks
To put it bluntly, English, Speaks and other like-minded “hateful faithful” politicians are leading a well-financed and carefully planned scheme to turn Arkansas and the United States into a fascist regime. They are using racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia, militarism — including veneration of law enforcement — and xenophobia — fear of immigrants — as talking points to justify voter suppression, voter intimidation, abusive and homicidal police practices, and mass incarceration.
The redistricting scheme in Arkansas is part of a national “hateful faithful” effort to dictate the future of the United States and the rest of the world according to the white supremacist Christian theology, imperialism, white innocence and exceptionalism, male supremacy, patriarchy and white ignorance that was considered the standard for what is right long before Donald Trump’s presidency. Trump is its most prominent political advocate.
But the “hateful faithful” were around long before Trump. The “hateful faithful” have engaged in political, economic, social and cultural warfare from the earliest days of the American political experiment.
And in that sense, “hateful faithful” legislative redistricting schemes across the United States are legislative versions of the political violence the world watched on Jan. 6, 2021.
Motivated by …
Why? The answer is that the “hateful faithful” are angry and afraid.
“Hateful faithful” politicians and voters are furious and fearful about a future where Black, Latinx, indigenous and Asian voters hold the power to decide public policies.
“Hateful faithful” politicians and voters are outraged about and fear a future where women, LGBTQI persons, workers and immigrants join their votes with Black, Latinx, Asian and indigenous voters to create what Martin Luther King Jr. called “a radical revolution of values,” where people are valued more than property and profits.
“Hateful faithful” politicians and voters are furious and fearful about a future where Black, Latinx, indigenous and Asian voters hold the power to decide public policies.
“Hateful faithful” politicians and voters fear a future where people ask hard questions such as how hundreds of Black men, women and children can be murdered in the south Phillips County community of Elaine in 1919 without a single white person being arrested and prosecuted.
“Hateful faithful” politicians and voters fear a future where school children learn George Washington and Thomas Jefferson bought and sold Black people as enslaved property.
The system they crave most
The re-districting plan co-sponsored by Jane English and Nelda Speaks is the “hateful faithful” model for a fascist future for Arkansas and the United States, because fascism is the political system “hateful faithful” people crave most.
They not only crave it. The Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection in Washington and redistricting plans like the one co-sponsored by English and Spears and enacted and rubber-stamped by other “hateful faithful” politicians prove something else.
The “hateful faithful” will resort to violence — physical, political and otherwise — to make that fascist future happen.
It is up to the rest of us to make sure that future does not become the next version of the American story.
Wendell Griffen is an Arkansas circuit judge and pastor of New Millennium Church in Little Rock, Ark.
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