No not a post on some fuzzy headed teacher that returns to his home town to teach……but rather a set of laws from our segregation days….the Jim Crow Laws…..
in case you are too young to remember the Jim Crow Laws…..let me help out…..let Wikipedia help…..
The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws in the United States enacted between 1876 and 1965. They mandated de jure racial segregation in all public facilities, with a supposedly “separate but equal” status for black Americans. In reality, this led to treatment and accommodations that were usually inferior to those provided for white Americans, systematizing a number of economic, educational and social disadvantages.
These laws when it was the law of the land, especially in the South, had numerous ways to prevent minorities, especially blacks, from voting….poll taxes, literacy tests, etc….but thank God for the Civil Rights Act of 1965 which put an end to these practices….okay the improvements were not immediate, but they eventually stop all the crap…….”it stopped all the crap”? I may have spoken too soon!
From the Newser website…..
After electing its first African American president—thanks in part to a surge of new voters—the US is in danger of seeing “a subtle return of Jim Crow voting laws,” writes EJ Dionne Jr. in the Washington Post. New laws being passed here, supposedly to prevent voter fraud, would be condemned as “election-rigging” in an emerging democracy—but here in the US no one is saying a word. Voter fraud is not a real problem, Dionne alleges, it’s an imaginary problem serving as an excuse for the GOP to wage war on the right to vote. The greatest impact of the new statues “will be to reduce turnout among African Americans, Latinos and the young,” the groups that helped to elect Obama in 2008. Meanwhile, the new laws—which include voter identification measures and limitations on early voting and same-day registration—will serve to benefit the Republican Party. In one particularly telling example, a Texas law allows concealed handgun licenses to be used as ID—but does not allow student IDs.
These attempts to limit the voting of minorities…all under the guise of preventing voter fraud….the problem is there is NO widespread voter fraud….in reality it is to try and limit the people that vote Democratic….you can scream voter fraud…….but there is little to use as evidence…..
And you still do not see the attack on one’s freedom to vote? Next time one of your conserv candidates rant on about loss of freedoms….ask them about these attempts to keep people from voting.
Of COURSE it’s voter fraud! There is fraud and it’s the the voters who are being defrauded – particularly those who vote Democrat.
However, it IS in the tradition of the founding fathers who sought to limit those who could vote – most notably, women I believe!
Quin, you are right and the truly sad thing is that the people will allow this to continue election after election…..
Of course (again) they will allow it to continue. That is partly because of all the hype and lies they buy into (not unreasonably since, if these people can sell the public crap washing machines, automobiles, TVs and electronics they don’t want, substances that will harm them, or not cure them, etc., etc., you can bet they’re good at what they do on the advertising front, can’t you?). But it’s also because that’s how REPRESENTATIVE democracy works – you get to vote for or (more often than not) against the two or three things you’ve decided are paramount in your world and you have to put up with all the sh*t baggage that comes with it! What else CAN you do?
Personally, I am almost to the point of taking it to the streets……..we could force some change……but we will settle instead…..
I understand, but there’s no good at all taking anything to the streets unless you have a real and quantified workable alternative – we DON’T! Any of us! We don’t like what we’ve got, but REAL change needs a radical re-think that the people would accept and that would be successful, economically as well as culturally and NO ONE has come up with any real, practical answers.
The truth is that ALL the “ism” don’t work – some are a bit better or worse, but everything from despotism to capitalism, to socialism and communism too simply don’t really work – not least because they all assume that people are different from the way they actually are – call it human nature in all its myriad variations if you prefer.
Most people are scared to death of change……they prefer to let things continue to fester until it is too late….like the US today….and we will still NOT get a change….we will get some BS incremental reform and the problem will remain the same……
Yes – because it will simply be a few minor variations on the same old failed themes – pointless!
So anytime I hear the word change…I immediately write it off…….Americans are too weak knee for real change and reform is easily overturned….another reason we have the problems we have….