It’s not a stretch to say that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act — the part of the landmark 1965 civil rights legislation at the center of a Louisiana case that the U.S. Supreme Court will hear this week — gave us much of modern American politics.

It created a system in which minority voters could finally elect representatives from districts drawn to make sure their voices were not intentionally minimized. We’ve seen the effect in Washington, where the Congressional Black Congress grew to a powerful force, and also closer to home, where districts drawn under the VRA’s terms routinely elect politicians who represent the majority of their constituents’ political preferences.

That’s the visible part.

But the practice has also given us the homogenous districts that border these voting ri

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