Where did the media elite’s sense of outrage come from? It’s simple, actually. To admit that the South had changed would mean letting go of their own cultural and moral superiority, of their sense of regional superiority with respect to the issue of race. Media and academic elites believe that, but for proper adult supervision, the South will return to its racist roots and that they alone can protect helpless black southerners from the perfidy rooted in white southerners’ DNA.

In his questioning from the bench back in February, as George Will pointed out, Justice Breyer revealed not only his distrust of southerners, but his disdain: “Imagine a State has a plant disease, and in 1965 you can recognize the presence of that disease. . . . Now, it’s evolved. . . . But we know one thing: The disease is still there.” Breyer’s disease metaphor was not only crude and condescending, it was rank regional bigotry — and from a sitting Supreme Court justice, no less.

That the southern states had now surpassed many northern states on the issue of electoral fairness did not matter to Breyer. That’s the thing about progressives: They don’t really care for progress, or facts. And here’s a fact that Justice Breyer didn’t care about: Massachusetts, as Chief Justice Roberts noted, now has “the worst ratio of white-voter turnout to African-American turnout.” Can it possibly be that northerners are more racist than Southerners?