Civil Rights-Era VRA Section 5
One problem with legislation created during the civil rights era to protect blacks from discrimination is that its present-day application typically is condescending.
For example, Georgia tried to protect the integrity of the voting process by requiring voters to present state-issued identification. I was under the impression that this was standard practice, but groups cried discrimination and compared this requirement to poll taxes and literacy tests, which whites used against poor and illiterate blacks to keep them from voting. Detractors claimed the ID requirement was discriminatory to old, low-income, and black people. Black legislators in Georgia even walked out of the state capital building in protest after the law passed.
I can’t help but think of the Stepin Fetchit character, and how little regard these black politicians had for their own people—too ignorant and/or too lazy to go down to the DMV and get a state-issued ID card, which was free if they couldn’t afford it.
I’m probably in the minority of blacks who sees the stark patronizing and condescending attitude people have toward black Americans, or at least one of a few to publicly talk about it.
Writing in National Review Online, Hans A. von Spakovsky, a former counsel to the assistant attorney general for civil rights at the Justice Department, writes about an example of the Voting Rights Act’s Section 5 application. This law is a holdover from the civil rights era that requires certain states to seek federal approval to make changes in voting procedures. Regarding the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division:
“These highly partisan bureaucrats…typically exhibit a disturbingly patronizing attitude towards [black Americans]…The latest example of this transparent political mischief has, unfortunately, gone largely unreported by the media. It’s an outrageous objection by the Civil Rights Division to a voting change in the small town of Kinston, N.C. The case involved a referendum by the residents of Kinston to change the elections for city council from partisan to nonpartisan. The referendum passed overwhelmingly in November 2008. But the Justice Department recently refused to pre-clear it, claiming that it discriminates against minorities.
“The department’s decision is as offensive as it is inexplicable. Consider that, at the time of the November 2008 election, Kinston had about 15,000 registered voters, of whom 65 percent were black. This is actually a higher registration rate than one would expect, since the 2000 census showed that the black voting-age population is just 58.8 percent of the total population. Moreover, on the town’s five-member city council (elected at large), two of the councilmen are black and all five are Democrats. Although the current mayor is white, the longtime prior mayor was black.”
Von Spakovsky adds that DOJ lawyers use the Voting Rights Act to benefit Democrats. I certainly can believe that, as 90 percent of black Americans vote for Democrats. But partisanship aside, the government believes blacks need hand-holding and special treatment, cannot be expected to use discernment or be responsible for their choices, or deal with the consequences of those choices.
Hence, the existence of such policies as racial preferences, which hold blacks to a lesser standard.
