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• Preemption. States in the South often bar cities from raising the minimum wage, mandating that companies provide paid sick leave, enacting policies to reduce carbon emissions, removing Confederate monuments, or virtually anything else that is considered liberal. So Democratic voters in the South often elect mayors and City Council members who have little power. Going even further, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has been suspending locally elected prosecutors if he doesn’t approve of their practices. 
• Low wages and benefits. States in the South almost universally have right-to-work policies that limit the expansion of union memberships and maintain low minimum wages. The states that have declined federal funding under Obamacare to cover people through Medicaid are largely in the South. These policies have a particularly negative effect on African Americans, who tend to have lower incomes.  
• Freedom restrictions. Getting an abortion, receiving gender-affirming health care if you are under 18, and teaching critical race theory in a classroom are among the actions banned in many states in the South. 
• Constant breaking with democratic norms. From Louisiana legislators recently voting to eliminate a position in New Orleans after a Black Democrat won it to Kentucky lawmakers threatening impeachment of judges whose rulings they disagree with to Georgia Governor Brian Kemp canceling a state Supreme Court election, Southern Republicans regularly take actions that are technically legal but violate democratic principles. Georgia Republicans are rushing to gerrymander the state now, because they fear Democrat Keisha Bottoms will be elected in November, putting Democrats on equal footing in redistricting. 

None of these moves are the modern-day equivalents of poll taxes or literacy tests. It is obviously far better to live in the South today than in 1935, particularly as a Black person. And many of the antidemocratic practices in the South have also been adopted by Republicans in states they control in the Great Plains and the Mountain West. But the Republicans in the South are most aggressive in constraining the political power and rights of those they disagree with. And unlike in very white states, such as Wyoming, these policies have terrible (and often intentional) racial impacts, privileging white residents over Black ones. 

Most voters in Southern states are Republicans, and they are voting for the politicians who enact these policies. But democracy is not just about elections. A region where individual rights are curtailed, minority groups have little power, and local officials can’t decide policies within their jurisdictions isn’t particularly democratic. 

Before Callais, the South was a region where there were plenty of Black politicians in office, largely because of the Voting Rights Act, but those Black officials had little power. Now, even that veneer of Black inclusion is being removed. While most attention nationally has been on Republicans in the South eliminating majority-Black congressional districts, Republicans are likely to use the Callais ruling for redistricting at the City Council, state legislative, and judicial levels in ways that will force even more African American politicians out of office.