50th Anniversary Of The Signing Of The Voting Rights Act

August 6 is also the day 50 years ago that President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act.   I find it deliciously apropos that yesterday the 5th Circuit Court struck down the Texas Voter Suppression (ID) law for the third time using Section 2 of the law.

The Voting Rights Act when it was signed into law by President Johnson, resulted in the mass enfranchisement of racial minorities across the nation.   It was markedly dramatic in the South, where the Jim Crow voter suppression and blatant disenfranchisement mechanisms in place were successful in denying African-Americans the right to vote.

The VRA was designed to enforce the voting rights provision in the 14th and 15th Amendments of the US Constitution, and has been updated and amended five times by Congress to expand its protections.  It is considered the most effective piece of civil rights legislation ever enacted by Congress, which is why it has also been under relentless attack by the conservative movement and the Republican Party..

The Voting Rights Act is not only groundbreaking legislation, it led to a dramatic expansion in the number of African-American politicians at all levels of government including four decades later the election of Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States.

It's why I and other African Americans are still highly pissed off about the Supreme Court's racist and clueless 2013 ruling in Shelby v. Holder that gutted a key enforcement provision in the Section 4(b) 'coverage formula' , that was designed to encompass jurisdictions that had historically engaged in egregious voting discrimination at the time the VRA was passed, and was subsequently updated in 1970 and 1975.

The coverage formula was the part that made the Section 5 preclearance provision work, and while the SCOTUS didn't strike Section 5 down, by shadily declaring unconstitutional the coverage formula, they basically made Section 5 unenforceable for the time being until Congress can pass a legislative fix to update the old formula.

While this should have been fixed immediately, and President Obama called on Congress today to act on the VRA fix legislation that Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) has filed to do so, good luck with that happening in a dysfunctional GOP controlled House and Senate whose party is heavily invested in keeping the number of voter going to the polls down in order to win elections.

As a result of Section 5 being gutted and the feds having to prosecute voting rights and discrimination cases using the VRA's Section 2 , the immediate result was Republican controlled legislatures gleefully started passing voter (ID) suppression laws designed to mess with and severely restrict the ability of  non-white voters to cast their ballots.  Texas' then Attorney General (now Governor, boo hiss) Greg Abbott, despite having the Texas Voter Suppression Law being struck down in federal court twice, reinstated the unjust law within hours of the SCOTUS misguided 5-4 ruling.

It resulted in the 2014 election cycle in 600,000 predominately non-white Texans not being able to vote.

So on this 50th anniversary of the passage of this groundbreaking law, let's remember that it safeguards the voting rights of all Americans, and must be defended by all who cherish human rights in our country.

MHP Breaks It Down To John Cornyn Why The VRA Is Needed

Many of you probably noted I gave Sen. John Cornyn  (R-TX) an honorable mention for last week's Shut Up Fool Award.   He is against the bipartisan reauthorization legislation for the Voting Right Act because his vanillacentric privileged behind actually parted his lips to say that Texas was being 'discriminated against'.

In today's Melissa Harris-Perry show, in her letter's segment she whacked him with Texas' long reprehensible history of suppressing the voting rights of non-white Texans

And can't wait to vote his behind out of office.

The VRA Is Not A 'Racial Entitlement'

And if you believe that (In)Justice Scalia and conservafool bull feces, you're a fool.

There was a reason that voting rights marches were done in the Deep South and the 24th Amendment to the Constitution exists that bans poll taxes.  Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) doesn't have a metal plate in his head because he was stopped by Alabama Segregation Stormtroopers State Police from crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge on Bloody Sunday for nothing. 

The Republican Party is actively engaged today in suppressing the voting rights of non-white American citizens and if you think that's okay, by voting for Republicans you support that policy and are a human rights oppressor.   

Congrats on DOMA and Prop 8 Being Overturned...But

I don't feel much like celebrating when my human rights went backwards yesterday no thanks to another narrow 5-4 Supreme Court decision. 

When the conservafool dominated SCOTUS fracked with the Voting Rights Act Section 4 yesterday, it was akin to a punch to the gut

It was even more infuriating because a Oreo cookie chomping knee-grow sellout cast the deciding vote to help disenfranchise his own people.

I know civil rights is not a zero sum game, but that's the way it looks to a lot of African-Americans today inside and outside the trans and SGL community. One group got their rights advanced while the centuries old historical pattern of crapping on the human rights of African-Americans made a comeback.
The bitter irony in all of this is the SCOTUS VRA ruling was aided and abetted by a self hating Oreo cookie chomping knee-grow sellout who isn't fit to shine the shoes of the great justice Thurgood Marshall, much less follow him onto the Supreme Court. 

An additional bitter irony to SGL and trans peeps is that the same Justice Anthony Kennedy, who is being loudly praised in non person of color GL circles today for his marriage equality rulings is the same one who sided with the majority to roll back our human rights. 

It also takes place in a Supreme Court in which the Chief Justice of it made his reputation and his fortune working to kill the Voting Rights Act. 

I believe the SCOTUS ruled the way they did on the VRA to throw the conservative movement a bone over DOMA and Prop 8 rulings they knew the conservative movement would excoriate them for.

And I'm not the only African-American member of the SGL and trans community who doesn't really feel like celebrating today.   Take it away Jasmyne Cannick:

The white gay community has been banging its head against the glass ceiling of a room called equality, believing that a breakthrough on marriage will bestow on them parity with heterosexuals--because in all other areas including employment, home-ownership, wealth, healthcare, education, etc. one could argue that they are already equal in terms of access. Well congratulations, on today's rulings, you are that much closer to being equal with your white counterparts.

And while Black same-gender loving couples may benefit from today's rulings, I would be remissed if I didn't say that the right to marry does nothing to address our access to employment, home-ownership, wealth, healthcare, education, etc. and so for many of us the fight continues because being able to get married is half the battle, the other half, is being able to have a home to live in, a job to provide for your family, access to affordable healthcare to share with your family, and access to the type of education to make all of the above happen.

Not to mention our voting rights are now exposed to once again being suppressed and rolled back by the neo-Confederate Republicans who are hellbent on taking our human rights back to 18th century levels.

And some of you GLB folks enable that oppression by voting for them as 'proud conservatives'.

I can't forget that and the four century tortured history as an African descended American as you GLB folks are giddily hailing a major civil rights win.

50 years of hard, painstaking human rights work that people fought, marched, shed blood and died for just went poof at the hands of four black robed white males and their honorary white man (as declared by Pat Buchanan) Uncle Ruckus Thomas

It's also a wakeup call for this generation of kids and their elders not paying attention to the news cycle.  We just got the reminder yesterday by the Supreme Court that for African-Americans, we never have the luxury of presuming that our human rights are secure because they are always under attack. 

And Republicans and the conservative movement are all too willing to engage in rolling them back.

So congratulations GLB community for your hard fought marriage win.  But I won't be at the party raising appletini toasts with you.