There is a particular kind of frustration that builds when someone who has never had to fight for the right to vote tells someone whose family bled for it to simply “get over it.”
That frustration was on full display Monday night on CNN’s NewsNight with Abby Phillip, when political commentator and former South Carolina state legislator Bakari Sellers confronted Kevin O’Leary, the Shark Tank personality and Canadian businessman, in a moment that is now circulating widely for good reason.
The exchange took place as the CNN panel discussed the wave of redistricting moves sweeping Republican-controlled Southern states following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to clear the path for Alabama to eliminate one of its two majority-Black congressional districts.
“Don’t be a dick!” Bakari Sellers torches “utterly disrespectful” Kevin O’Leary. pic.twitter.com/unFiLF8vOE
— Mike Sington (@MikeSington) May 12, 2026
The ruling has opened the door for states across the South to redraw maps in ways that dilute Black political representation, a coordinated effort that civil rights advocates have described as one of the most significant rollbacks of voting rights in a generation.
O’Leary’s contribution to the conversation was to tell his fellow panelists to get over it. “I think everybody should take confidence in the fact the Supreme Court basically supported one vote, one person, guaranteed in perpetuity, and the rest is just map wars,” O’Leary said. “Get over it.”
Sellers did not get over it.
“The problem with that sentiment is that you were born in 1954,” Sellers told O’Leary. “You’re 71. In 1954, during your lifetime, we actually had Brown v. Board of Education.” When O’Leary interrupted, Sellers continued: “My point is that my mother was born in 1951. She desegregated schools. My father was shot in the civil rights movement.”
O’Leary continued to talk over him. “I’m going to finish because you’re being utterly disrespectful,” Sellars said.
“What I’m telling you is that there are people in this country who fought, died, and bled for the right to vote. Don’t be a dick. Just understand,” Sellars added.
O’Leary responded by asking whether Sellers had a problem with the Constitution of the United States. The host stepped in to reset the conversation. But the moment had already landed.
The redistricting fight unfolding across the South right now is a direct, coordinated effort to reduce Black political representation in Congress at the exact moment when Black voters in states like Alabama, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Georgia have the population numbers to demand more of it, not less.
The Supreme Court’s ruling in Louisiana v. Callais earlier this year made it significantly harder to challenge these maps under the federal Voting Rights Act. States have moved quickly.
O’Leary’s framing, that the Constitution is being upheld, that this is just “map wars,” that everyone should get over it, is the kind of comment that someone who has never experienced voting as something that had to be won, defended, and protected against active suppression would think.
It does not sound reasonable to someone whose father was shot in the Civil Rights Movement. It does not sound reasonable to the communities in Alabama, Louisiana, and Tennessee who are watching their congressional representation being engineered away in real time.
