Do you remember how hard it was for black folks to register to vote back in the day? States like Alabama (shout out to the great blog "Left in Alabama"), actually had poll taxes, and "literacy tests" that had to be taken before poor people of color could register. These tests, of course, were often administered by the all white local county officials, and enforced by the local police departments. Can anyone say "White Citizens Council" ? Anyhoooo, that was such a long long time ago, and A-merry-ca has come so far since then, that your friendly neighborhood field Negro is just mentioning it to give you a little history lesson. Right? Wrong! I know the Supreme Court said such things were improper, and that the folks in the old "Jim Crow" South were wrong to do these things. But the new Supremes, made up of....well, conservative republicans, tend to disagree. They ruled, just this year, that it was alright to suppress people's right to vote, in order to do away with fraud. Look up Crawford v. Marion County Election Board if you think I am lying. And read this excellent article in Newsweek Magazine from Jonathan Alter, to understand exactly what is going on here. Voter fraud my ass, that's just a smoke screen to keep black folks from voting. Mr. Alter, of course, thinks it's the GOP being political and not racial; I tend to disagree. (What came first the chicken or the egg?)
Now I am trying to be respectable and not demagogue this issue, lord knows I catch enough flack from my republican friends (yes I have some) for staying on their party as much as I do. But come on now, when they do things like this, how can I? Hey, you rethugs have a history when it comes to this kind of stuff, so don't go crying a river when people call you out on it. Let's keep it real folks: the rethugs are the ones bringing back those days, and they are the ones making my little history lesson seem more like current events.
But I promised myself and Mrs Field that I was going to stop getting so worked up over little issues like the suppression of people's right to vote. It's not good for my pressure. No one else in A-merry-ca seems to give a damn, so why should I? You would think the folks in the democratic party would be making a bigger deal about this, but they are not. I guess they don't want to be seen as the ones crying racism. That is so una-merry-can and so unpatriotic. After all, there are no racist in A-merry-ca anymore, just different points of views as to how to move the country forward.
Anyway, as I did with the last election; as election day draws closer, I will be posting some links to help folks in some of these key battle ground states, so that they can understand their legal rights when it comes to voting.
It's important. The White Citizens Coun....whoops, I mean the republicans know it, and so should you.
