The intention is to harm minorities. With the North Carolina laws which were thrown out a few years back, evidence came to light that the Republican governor tasked some of his subordinates with finding out how black people predominantly voted, and then tailored the laws based on what they found (which is in fact why the laws were thrown out). If he had merely asked for how Democrats predominantly vote, it would still have been despicable, but legal, and more politically effective. Instead, Republicans chose the less-effective, less legal option, because their goal was specifically to harm minorities.
Now, in that case, they got caught, because the governor was foolish enough to explicitly put his racism into writing. But other states have put into place exactly the same measures, and just stayed quiet as to their motivations. Is there any reason to suspect that their motivations were any different?
If this is remotely true, then the Governor was a moron. Everyone knows how blacks predominately vote: Democrat.
The question is a good one. Everyone wants to get out their supporters and keep the non-supporters at home. If I see that the people in this particular area, say members of the Seneca Tribe don’t support me, then I might want to close a couple of polls in that area. I don’t care about their race. I care about votes. If they supported me, then I would wear a Seneca ceremonial dress at their rally (after getting permission from the Tribe).
Well, a first step would be to agree that there are lingering impacts to that past racism, I guess. Because from your posts, I get the impression that you don’t think there are any remaining effect from that past systemic racism and also that there is no longer any significant racism in American society.
This is false. For example, when Democrats took over the governorship, house, and senate in NJ, one Democratic senator put forth a partisan gerrymandering plan that was quickly shot down by his fellow Democrats. Another example, efforts to make it easier to use mail-in ballots probably benefit the military and the elderly more than minorities, and both of those groups tend to vote Republican.
I’m open to it. Absolutely open. However, I have no wealth from my grandfather from 1940. So I think that the burden is on those making the accusation to say that they would have this sort of wealth that was denied to them because of that. If they can, then I’ll be the first to sign the petition for reparations.
What I have seen, however, is some calculations that their grandfather was denied $X in 1940 and compounded for 80 years, is worth $Y so write me a check. Well, I didn’t get that, so no.
As far as “significant racism in American society” that gets us back full circle. Where is that? In general laws? A couple of rednecks in a shit kicker bar in the south? What are we talking about and what is the proposed solution?
Gerrymandering? Look at MD’s 6th for how Democrats behave.
Historically, there have been examples where the intent was clearly to harm minorities, and there have been other examples where the intent was purely to gain political power. So both are possible.
What I find most intuitively plausible is that some of the individuals involved have been motivated by racism, others by pure political power, and others by some combination thereof.
But isn’t there a difference between these two thoughts: 1) I don’t want black people to vote because they are genetically inferior, one step above monkeys, and they cannot be trusted with responsible governance, and 2) I don’t want black people to vote because the polling tells me that they won’t vote for me?
To me, the first is racism, the second is politics.
That is a bit of a red herring, the wealth some whites did not get is not the issue, it is the very significant number of blacks and other minorities that lost opportunities thanks to discriminatory policies of the past (and the present).
Heath said existing reparations programs in Rosewood and other communities could serve as a model for Tulsa.
In Evanston, Ilinois, city officials in March approved the first batch of funds – which amounts to $400,000 – in a program offering reparations to Black residents whose families have been affected by decades of discriminatory housing practices. The move made Evanston the first local community in the country to launch a reparations program for Black people.
Robin Rue, a former Evanston council member who heads the city’s reparations committee, said the city will fund the program with sales tax generated from recreational marijuana. Black residents will be eligible for up to $25,000 in housing grants to help purchase a home, pay off a mortgage or renovate a home. Applicants must only be able to prove that they lived in Evanston between 1919-1969, which is before a fair housing ordinance was passed, or that they are a descendant of someone who was, Rue said.
“I have a lived experience understanding the barriers, the disparities, the divide between access to capital and information and opportunity in Evanston,” Rue said. “It was appropriate that we advance reparations in Evanston because we celebrate diversity and inclusion… but we still are absolutely segregated both physically by race and economically.”
The program has garnered criticism from some residents who say there are too many restrictions on the funds and that it doesn’t protect Black residents from racial discrimination by banks and real estate companies who are involved in process. Other critics say a housing voucher program is not the proper way to award reparations.
In Rosewood, the scholarship fund has proven to have the most long-term success in the last 27 years. At least 297 students have received the Rosewood scholarship since 1994, according to a 2020 report by The Washington Post.
Some of those students have attended Florida A&M University, a historically Black institution.
“Money is often how we make it up to people, it’s one of the ways you try to make someone whole,” said Martha Barnett, a retired Tallahassee-based attorney who was representing about 12 Rosewood massacre survivors when the 1994 bill was passed. “Money for their property, money for the lost opportunity to live a good life. They lost the opportunity to have their first, second generation of kids benefit from the middle class life they had created.”
Well, yes. Although they both may boil down to tribalism: Protect Us and Our interests, and keep Them down—whether the Us = White people or Republicans.
It seems obtuse to imply that a law must explicitly or intentionally target a particular race in order to harm minorities. It’s also missing the point to imply that only government laws can be racist. And yes, tons of racist laws are still on the books, because they don’t affect the majority and therefore no great pressure is placed on legislators to change them.
Just for example, suppose I made a policy that my employees must not wear traditionally black hairstyles or they will be fired. Traditional white hairstyles are just fine. “Professional” even.
Isn’t it clear that policy disproportionately harms my black employees while not affecting my white employees at all? Despite nowhere mentioning skin color or race? Hell, maybe I don’t even intend to harm my black employees at all, I just have a subconscious prejudice against black hairstyles, probably from reading too many fashion magazines or something.
Now multiply that sort of “small” obstacle by every single organization and policy in our society, from the hiring manager at the local gas station, the local bank officer, to state policy, all the way up to federal institutions, and the policies they enact.
It seems to be an entirely good thing to study these systems and root these policies out wherever we can. Even if none of them explicitly or intentionally target a particular race (and many do – voter ID laws are intentionally racist, for example, without specifically mentioning race, exactly like poll taxes and literacy tests). Why would you be opposed to studying racism for the purposes of minimizing and mitigating its harmful social consequences?
I’m not @Chronos; but that quote doesn’t look to me like it means how they vote in the sense of who they vote for, but how they vote in the sense of by what means and at what times they tend to vote.
You only care about whether you get votes, and not whether the vote was fair?
Why are you (if you are) in favor of voting at all, then? Why would you not favor cancelling all future votes as soon as your group gets into power?
Yes, there’s a difference between those two thoughts; but neither position will support a society in which voting is supposed to matter. And the effect of the second thought, if it’s carried into practice, is racist even if the intent isn’t.
ISTR someone here saying you’re a lawyer. I’d think that a lawyer in the United States would know full well that this statement of yours is not even close to an accurate description of how a law is determined to be discriminatory. Consider the following two terrms: disparate intent and disparate impact.
I don’t see an issue with a company that has a policy that every employee must have a certain professional hairstyle. If you are suggesting that a company would allow mohawks and mullets but disallow dreadlocks or cornrows, then I fully support a law which prohibits such a policy as it allows whites to have non-professional hairstyles, but disallows the same for blacks. I’m on board with that.
But even in the absence of such a law, the solution is simple–don’t wear dreadlocks. I’m sure many a white person has lost a job because he shows up wearing a mullet and sporting tattoos. And just like the voting—show up on election day as was done for a hundred years. These seem like pettifoggery when compared with true injustices of the past.
I watched a documentary on the Tulsa Race Riots in 1921. A man was on who was the great grandfather of a black man who owned a hotel in the black section of town. He stated that the hotel was valued at $175k in 1921 which would be about $100 million today with compound interest. He used that as an example of how black wealth has been stolen and how his family would have “generational wealth” if that hotel hadn’t been burned to the ground by white racists.
But that’s now how any of this works. At all. Maybe his great grandfather, and then his grandfather would have become the next Hilton or Marriott. More likely it would have been one of the thousands of others that sit on the side of the old roadways today falling down. Further, his hotel succeeded precisely because of racial segregation in that it catered to only blacks. Integration would have destroyed that hotel.
Yes, yes, and yes, again it was wrong that white racists burned that hotel. But hardly anyone has wealth from 100 years ago unless your name is Kennedy or Rockefeller. One generation starts it, the next builds on it, and the next drinks it away.
Just like redlining. So great grandpa couldn’t get the loan for a house in the nice section of town in 1950. His son could, and the next two generations certainly could. The loss revenue would likely have never seen the present generation.
I’m not condoning what happened in the past, but where is the evidence that those things continue to this day? Show it to me, and I’ll be on board. But the “evidence” is just anecdote and recitation of the terrible stuff that happened back then. Nobody disagrees with the tales of horror from the past.
While it’s true that most parents don’t pass any significant amount of wealth to their kids, don’t you think there’s a difference between being raised in a nice neighbourhood with decent schools and healthy food, vs being raised in poverty in a high crime area by a parent who has to worry about where the next meal is coming from? Quite apart from inheritance, parents invest in their children to aid the kids’ future success, and wealthier parents can invest more.
To directly answer your question “yes!” it makes a difference.
But look at what we have done. SNAP and food stamps to help people in these communities. HUD assistance. WIC. The whole deal.
We have tried charter and magnet schools, educational stipends to send your kids wherever–all opposed by Democrats.
High crime? Clinton, Biden and the Democrats said that we are going to get these assholes off of your streets and it damned well worked. But now it is unfair and we should defund the police.
And these things are now generational. Almost sixty years of a War on Poverty and forty years of a war on crime. When does it stop?
