via Supreme Court looks at Voting Rights Act | Politics | Chron.com – Houston Chronicle.
The Supreme Court
The court will decide the constitutionality of the central provision of the act, which seeks to protect minority voting rights by requiring a broad subset of the nation’s states and jurisdictions to receive federal approval before making any changes to its voting procedures.
This is yet another protection that the right-wing Supreme Court wants to extinguish. This court has already ruled against women in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co.
The Voting Rights Act was enacted in 1965, at a time when literacy tests and other schemes were routinely used to intimidate and exclude black voters. It has been expanded to include other minorities and its duration extended four times, mostly recently in 2006 by overwhelming congressional majorities.
But it is now being challenged as an outrageous “badge of shame” on communities that have never discriminated, at a time when minorities have been elected to public office in record numbers.
“The America that has elected Barack Obama as its first African-American president is far different than when (the law) was first enacted in 1965,” wrote Gregory Coleman, a former Texas solicitor general who brought the challenge on behalf of a tiny utilities district in Austin.
Communities that have never discriminated? Really? There is no such thing. Societal racism, or institutional racism, is alive and well today in every community. Do you ever hear talk in your community in opposition to affirmative action? What is the opinion in your community concerning inner-urban schools?
Just the fact that there exists a group organized to consider weakening a protection against racism is the epitome of, and defines, societal racism. The fact that the Huston Chronicle is speaking in terms of support for the challenge of, or diminishing of, the Voting Rights Act is in and of itself institutional racism. The quote from Gregory Coleman, a former Texas solicitor general who brought the challenge saying that since we elected Barack Obama that America is ” far different than when (the law) was first enacted in 1965″ is an attempt to justify racism.
This idea that “times have changed” defines institutional racism.
This is one slippery slope on which we cannot afford to step. Taking away the rights of women and minorities through activist judges is contrary to the American values that motivated me to serve so long in the military and is an affront to my patriotism. The job of government is to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. Minorities cannot fight societal racism so the government must support the Voting Rights Act. It’s a sad state, but it is a necessity. Just as with the case of Ledbetter v. Goodyear, should this case be won by the bigots, then Congress must act to overturn this shameful decision just as they are doing with Ledbetter. We cannot stand by and let the ideologues that run the Supreme Court take away the civil rights that were so hard fought and won.
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