Thursday, March 28, 2024

The New Jim Crow: Disguised As Protection of Voting Integrity.

August 29, 2013 by  
Filed under News, Opinion, Politics, Weekly Columns

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(ThyBlackMan.com) North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory (R) recently signed into law a package of voting reforms passed by the North Carolina legislature. McCrory approved the most sweeping voter-suppression law seen in the United States in a generation. The law is just the latest in a spate of similar laws passed by states to address the issue of voter fraud. Their argument is that just one case of a person voting who is not eligible to vote is an attack on the democratic system. The North Carolina law is one of the more stringent of all the laws that have been passed and that is in large part due to the recent Supreme Court decision that struck down the portion of the Voting Rights Act that forced most Southern states to get federal approval before making changes to their voting laws.

The law signed by McCrory requires that all those who vote show a photo ID. This can include an in-state driver’s license, U.S passport or military ID. The law also shortens the period of early voting and makes it harder if notvoter-id impossible for students at colleges and universities, who are not from North Carolina, from voting in the state. Republicans, who control the governorship and state legislature argue that these are reasonable measures, but by signing the law, McCrory has spurred a backlash among the law’s opponents, which is likely to only grow before the law is scheduled to go into effect in 2016.

For minorities in North Carolina, the law is nothing more than Jim Crow revisited. The period known as Jim Crow lasted from the end of the Reconstruction in 1872 until the Voting Rights Act of 1965. For almost one hundred years, Southern states imposed laws that made it harder for minorities to vote. Laws and policies like the poll tax, the grandfather clause and the literacy test disenfranchised minorities and kept African Americans from participating in and contributing to our democracy.

The ACLU and the NAACP were quick to oppose this law just as they have been with similar laws across the country. To these groups, the law is targeted at minorities, students and low income whites with the aim of creating an entire class of disenfranchised voters. Their main argument is that the law is a solution seeking a problem since very few cases of voter fraud can actually be documented. These groups can, however, point to cases where elderly minorities have no state issued ID because they have no birth certificate or other form of identification. This demographic is comprised of people that are also most likely to be reluctant to seek out a new ID even if the government is offering them free of charge which is a key provision with most of these laws.

There is a universal backlash against the North Carolina law which is growing across America. Even  louder is the growing chorus of liberal and fair minded conservatives and that is due in large part to the greater national mood. For most minorities, these laws are part of an overall trend that has seen attempts to roll back hard fought civil rights gains. They are determined to push back against any effort along these lines and North Carolina is not ground zero in the fight. For most civil rights activists the law signed by McCrory cannot be separated from the Supreme Court voting rights decision and the recent trial and acquittal of George Zimmerman in the Trayvon Martin case.

Because the law is seen in this light, Blacks and other minorties will fight hard to prevent the law from going into effect. Even many non-minorities are lining up against this particular law because the same legislature that passed it has also taken a very hard right turn on many other issues. As the supporters and opponents of the law harden their position one thing seems certain; the backlash against the law will only grow in intensity leading to the next election.

Staff Writer; Stanley G. Buford

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Comments

5 Responses to “The New Jim Crow: Disguised As Protection of Voting Integrity.”
  1. justathought says:

    Same way they’re exempt from Obamacare!

  2. Dcarter910 says:

    So can someone explain to me how hispanics (illegals in particular) are voting in such numbers despite not having a birth certificate or drivers license to the point where their political power is now greater than poor stupid negros? Help me here…straight talk.

  3. Denise Desiree says:

    This type of insidious shenanigans performed by some of the nations highest governmental and legal institutions points to the degree of on going, racially based, institutional and culturally based prejudice.

    As a citizen of Native American ancestory who is also not biologically hetrosexual, I have learned from bitter experience, how such prejudicially motivated institutions seek to supress the civil rights of non white individuals which such voter suppression laws and legislations are intended to affect. This type of oppression should never be tolorated by such institutions or by those who are not immediately impacted by such atrocities. History is clear, regardless of anyone’s bias to the contrary. When any category of humanity is allowed to be institutionally disenfranchised, it serves to weaken by design and intention, the protections of other individuals that such institutions inevitably expand its’ aim to suppress i.e., homosexuals, impoverished, illiterate, mentaly impaired etc., under the pretext of law and order. Even if your not African American, this is wrong and any toloration of this type of tripe serves only to degenerate the integrety of any definition of any democracy.

  4. Gina says:

    Anne that argument is so bogus, what’s is so troubling about your ilk is that you think blacks are too stupid to get an ID. I remember a time in my life that I had to show mine.
    It’s proven the fraud is on the dim side, you clowns are worried it want be so easy for you next time. Machines switching over to Obama, people enrolling the mentally ill to vote as democrats, not republicans, OFA paying the BOE to sign up voters and in an illegal way.
    The law is signed, get over it.

  5. Anne says:

    One big reason these laws, not just in North Carolina, are so atrociously unfair is because they are penalizing law-abiding citizens who have voted for years and never committed voter fraud. Rather than protecting voter integrity, these laws are undermining it by rigging the system in favor of Republican election victories. What people mindlessly cheering these actions fail to realize is that sooner or later, they themselves will feel the effects of such blatantly unfair and discriminatory laws. Today, they are aimed chiefly at racial minorities, especially black folks. They are also aimed at the poor, the elderly, and at college students, all groups that also include white Republicans. The state of Florida implemented highly restrictive laws, with the result that last November, they had a big mess on their hands resulting in their being the last state to tabulate the results of the presidential election there.

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