2006-06-28

Palast: Democracy in Chains

"Don't kid yourself: the Republican party's decision to "delay" the renewal of the Voting Rights Act has not a darn thing to do with objections of the Republican's white sheets caucus.

Complaints by a couple of good ol' boys to legislation have never stopped the GOP leadership from rolling over dissenters.

This is a strategic stall that is meant to decriminalise the Republican party's new game of challenging voters of colour by the hundreds of thousands."

7 comments:

Paul Hue said...

So, the republicans are sporting more top-level black candidates... and simultaneously attempting to stymie black voters.

Paul Hue said...

Prediction: If the Voting Rights Act dies, black voter participation will drop not a fraction of a percent. Meanwhile, the spread of republicanism among blacks will continue. Of course, so will the mutual actions of dems (including blacks!) and repos to scrutinize the voter rolls in districts that constantly vote for the other party.

None of the political curruption that occurs today has anything to do with the actions that Voting Rights Act was designed to counter, and which it has succeeded in eliminating.

Nadir said...

"So, the republicans are sporting more top-level black candidates... and simultaneously attempting to stymie black voters."

You got it. They even used handkerchief head negroes like Ken Blackwell in Ohio to do the work for them. Aren't you the one who always talks about Africans selling other Africans into slavery or house negroes ratting out the field negroes who plotted against their masters? Don't pretend that black folks aren't guilty of deceipt and corruption.

Besides, as Palast pointed out, white Republicans did the same to Jewish senior citizens in Florida. This is about politics, not race.

Nadir said...

"None of the political curruption that occurs today has anything to do with the actions that Voting Rights Act was designed to counter, and which it has succeeded in eliminating."

Bullshit! Many of the practices that the Voting Rights Act is meant to elminate happened when blacks were voting overwhelmingly for Republicans instead of the racist Democrats. It was the Democratic Party's passage of the Voting Rights that swayed blacks to the Democratic Party in the first place.

Keeping an individual from voting is about power. White southerners wanted to keep blacks from voting because the whites wanted to keep a stranglehold on power. The Republican delay of the Voting Rights act is the exact same thing.

Paul Hue said...

Nadir, I agree that any repo or demo attempts to minimize the votes of the other guy is simple politics. Thus the voting rights act has nothing to do with this. These parties also try to suppress fraud from the other guy, which is important and ethical. I want the repos to stop the demos from getting non-citizens and paid homeless to vote, and I want demos to stop the repos from committing similar acts.

I don't understand why the repos even care about the Voting Rights Act, but I'm certain that this isn't because they are trying to keep black folks from voting.

The only reason I can think why the demos want to keep this act alive is that it's an old victory for them, and they benefit by claiming that those repos are racist crackers trying to lynch black folks for drinking out of whites-only fountains.

Paul Hue said...

Nadir, I certainly agree that black folks are no better or worse than whites, that they practiced slavery and that they sold-out slave rebellions. But that doesn't mean that blacks who in 2006 want low taxes, school vouchers, and small govt fall into those catagories. What's the connection?

There are no appreciable numbers of white folks who want blacks to have low SAT scores, low college attendance rates, high unemployment, poor credit, etc. Surely 99% of white folks in 2006 USA want black folks to be successful, productive, affluent people who commit few crimes, read books, purchase homes, maintain good credit, and collect no govt assistance.

This is what the white folks in the republican party want, and this is what the black folks there want as well. There are no white folks left who want black folks "down", and thus no sell-out black folks who can help in this quest.

The white folks left who feel this way represent such a small fraction of the population that they might as well not even exist. I agree that there is a good fraction of white folks who have a negative impression of black folks in general. But this is not an impression that they want to have, and does not differ from the attitude that most blacks have themselves.

Today's black republicans want a prosperous and productive black population, but they have ideas about how to achieve this that differ from the black folks who think that the Voting Rights Act is important in 2006.

Paul Hue said...

Nadir, your history lesson is confusing. A higher fraction of Republicans voted for it than democrats, and it would not have passed without those repo votes. LBJ was president and most public advocate of it, and this did help sway blacks into the demo party. What does this have to do with 2006? The practices of white politicos in pre-1965 souther states no longer exist, nor do the views of white folks in those areas. Expiration of this act will not result in disenfranchisement of blacks.