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Saturday, March 16, 2013

Let us ALL March to Selma

The Supreme Court is considering a bill to reverse the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a bill passed in the wake of Bloody Sunday-the vicious beating of civil rights protestors by the Alabama National Guard on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma in March of that year.  

In Shelby County, Alabama, v. Holder, Shelby County attourneys are trying to argue that we live in a Post-racial society that no longer necessitates legislation to protect Black voters against discrimination. If only that were true...

A few short years ago (2004) the State of Alabama voted  to keep 'separate schools for white and Colored children' as part of their constitution. Sound post-racial?

In 2011, Alabama the Beautiful passed the anti-immigrant, anti-Hispanic law HB56 which not only gives the police, school administrators and others the right to ask anyone they think "looks like an immigrant" for citizen documentation, but it also criminalizes (as in you will go to jail) anyone who associates or does business with undocumented people- whether one gives a ride to a hitchhiker who is undocumented, rents an apartment without checking citizenship papers, allows a child to enroll in a school, or signs any contract with such a person. All of these acts are supposed to be based on deciding that someone looks  suspicious  so we should not expect any deportations of Germans, white Canadians, or any of the other numerous undocumented but white-skinned people in Alabama

And lets see, in the wake of the reelection of our first Black president, where do you think the highest number of the racist tweets hailed from? Yes, you guessed it: Alabama.

Given the enlightened, post-racial state of this lovely place, I cannot imagine why there is any reason to keep the Voting Acts bill on the books. There really is no need since in Alabama Blacks, Whites, and Latinos are treated oh so equally...

Of course, the real reason that Alabama wants to repeal Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act may have little to do with the new "post-racial" climate of modern-day Alabama and a whole lot to do with the fact that the Obama administration successfully employed Section 5 to
prevent Southern Republican-backed voter-identification laws from going into effect before last year's election. 

Poll tax? Voter ID? Whatever it takes...