From the Director (Nov 2025)
November 24, 2025ISS Director Sees Recent Supreme Court Decision on Voting Rights Act as Example of Violent Scriptural Politics
I felt a strong need to share these brief sentiments and reflections with you.
This Supreme Court decision I find to be so harmful and violent that I could hardly sleep last night. As Brown v Board of 1954 and the Voting Rights Acts of 1965 marked and greatly affected the beginning and early course of my life, providing opportunities for academic training and professional pursuits and (most important) provoked and inspired me toward development of an acute critical sense, I see yesterday’s decision as a direct fear-laden response to those early decisions and to the type of life or conscientization they (may) open up.
“Devastating” does not even name the profound effect that this Louisiana April 2026 decision has and will have—for generations to come. I see clearly in the rhetorics of the majority’s decision the politics and violence that are part of the dynamics of scripturalectics that define scripturalization (in this case, as racialization).
Beware the work scriptural logics are made to do!
Behold! the pressing rationale and need for ISS.
I have also written the following to the New York Times:
No matter the state and national party political machinations that are likely to follow as responses, it is clear that just as I (born in 1954, year of Brown v Board of Education; 10 turning 11 when the 1965 Voting Rights Act was passed) was profoundly affected and life- and consciousness-shaped by Supreme Court decisions, the life and conscientization of my grandson (almost 8 months old) and his world will be profoundly shaped by this most recent Supreme Court decision (Louisiana v. Callais). I do not see in the usual responses to such decisions a simple return to the status quo ante. No. What we now face is a disturbingly steep fall supercharged by the all too historically easy super-facial/fundamental-ist fear, anxiety, and ignorance. Going forward it will prove to be very hard if not impossible for the polity to negotiate. So much sadder and harder is the present situation, as it is apparently without enough courageous and disciplined citizens willing to save their world from this deep spiral into which it has fast fallen. The courageous and disciplined types I have in mind are those who as Immanuel Kant rightly put it—even if he did not rightly model it—must “dare to know” (sapere aude)! Dare, that is, to think outside the cage, the box of western-aged anti-black rac(e)-ial-ism.
Vincent L. Wimbush
4/30/2026
