History of Voter Suppression

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Peace. I think the following are worth mentioning. First, voter suppression has been going on in this country since before I was born. It was a natural result of giving black people (and poor white people and Latinos/Latinas, and orientals and women ...) the right to vote. Therefore, when you hear about voter suppression you should not think that there is anything new about it (although there are interesting minor innovations and mutations) in broad strokes it is more or less the same: poll taxes, gerry mandering, removing polling places, hanging chads. You should think to yourself, "this is really tiresome".

Second, the courts are perfectly capable of stopping this behavior whenever they want.  I slightly exaggerate, but they have broad powers here. Often, they choose not to. Therefore, it is a mistake to put your faith in the courts to "fix things". The Supreme Court coup d'etat in 2000, its support of Citizens United and its destruction of the Voting Rights Act are three good examples. The courts permit the states to set voting procedures based on by-county tax rates, hence worse voting machines in poor/black districts which is a form of voter suppression (see hanging chads). The courts may help or they may not. Their record is inconsistant.

Third, if you read some of the comments and forums and editorials, then you know there are phrases used by racists and Trump supporters to justify their racism. If you use those phrases (e.g. "we must condemn violence on all sides...") then you should expect people to conclude that you subscribe to the full racist agenda. That may not be true, but you should be aware of this.

Finally, local police forces have been using intimidation and violence to keep minority groups in place since at least the War Between the States (Civil War to you Northerners). If by this time, we have not plausibly dealt with this issue, why do you think the so-called minority groups should have any faith in the system self-correcting? Why shouldnt they defend themselves? Its not as if the problem is going to go away and they live here too. As a Jew in Virginia, growing up, how many times was I asked why the Jews of Germany did not defend themselves? (*)

All of these issues have come up in the last few weeks as people criticise me for being opposed to institutional racism, as I understand it, in this country. Everyone here is on the side of righteousness but we come from different backgrounds so maybe it is good to state assumptions. I will probably need to edit this post. I apologize for making this post so short, obviously it could and maybe should be much longer. Peace!

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(*) Of course, the answer to that is that they would have been slaughtered, I think.