The Voting Rights Act and South Carolina…. I think it was Glenn Beck who seemed uninformed about Southern politics and why the Voting Rights Act was necessary. (This is somewhat related to the SC Primary story).
Southern Democrats became very skillful at techniques to keep blacks from getting elected to public office. The typical one that the VRA is used to “fix” is city council elections. Let’s say there are 7 people on the council, and the population is 35% black and most of the people vote based on race. If the council is elected on an “at large” basis – meaning all 7 candidates run in the entire city, typically the 7 white candidates will get 60% of the vote and the black candidates will get 40% of the vote… and you wind up with an all-white city council in a city that is 1/3 black. The VRA forces cities where there the voting process is being used to exclude racial minorties to change their system. For instance, the city might be forced to set up 5 districts and have 2 at-large members. The result would probably be 2 or 3 of the members then being black, more accurately matching the demographics of the city. Another “remedy” used in some places is cumulative voting – with the at large system above, each voter gets to vote 7 times – and can cast all 7 votes for one person – enabling a candidate to win with only about 13% of the voters voting for them.
Runoff requirements have been another case where this comes up. In our hypothetical city, say there is a primary for mayor with 3 white candidates and an exceptional black candidate who draws a lot of white votes…. the black candidate wins 47% of the vote, and the white candidates get 25-20-8%. A requirement that if the winner doesn’t get 50%+1 votes that the top two have to harve another election that will probably wind up 53%-47% with the white candidate winning.
People who have never lived in the South (and Florida is not part of The South) are largely unaware of all the things that Southern Democrats have done and continue to do in order to keep blacks out of power. Local sheriffs (generally elected) are also very useful enforcement tools to keep “The System” functioning smoothly.
What you write was generally true for many districts in the old south. The problems date back all the way to post-1865 reconstruction where the Federal governors (usually army generals) appointed over the former Confederate states gave land and voting rights to blacks and northern “immigrants” (to use a polite term) while denying property rights and voting rights to southern whites and Confederate veterans. The backlash from that period gave rise to all kinds of social problems that persisted in the deep South well into the 20th century, such as the rise of the KKK and the passage of Jim Crow laws. So the voting rights act was one of several tools that Wash D.C. used to force the old Confederate States to fully implement the civil rights act.
However, the voting rights act as a permanent measure created it’s own special set of problems:
(1) If the VRA is so good for the south, why isn’t it also good for Michigan and Arizona? Or Massachusetts and Idaho? Why does it focus solely on mid 20th-century black/white racial politics when Hispanics now outnumber blacks and whites in many districts? And why does everyone continue to assume that all southern politics are racial? Why do we keep believing that? Look at the southern states that voted for Obama in 2008. What more proof does anyone need that constant Federal oversight is no longer needed?
(2) To accommodate the VRA, cities were divided into zones that were predominately black and predominately white. So now we have proportional representation at the city council. Well and good. But then uh-oh, the schools and subdivisions in the various districts are segregated! Guess we need even more Federal laws to undo what the VRA helped create. So that lead to court-ordered school busing and open housing laws to try to bust up those segregated districts that helped ensure “equal” political representation on a racial basis. Then we find that banks were charging higher interests to folks who (apparently) because of where they live tended not to pay their debts. Oh no, can’t have that! It’s obviously racist lending practices! So the government ordered the banks to make easy loan money available to citizens who clearly had no collateral or means to repay the loans. Now fast forward to 2008 and TARP where the taxpayers were forced by the Congress to bail out all those banks that made bad loans.
(3) Meanwhile many of the economic-conservative southerners (white and black) simply gave up and left the big cities like Atlanta and Memphis. So now you have predominantly black liberal districts where it is politically impossible for a white male to be elected Mayor. But for some strange reason the VRA doesn’t work in reverse. Because apparently it’s not possible to discriminate against southern whites. God-fearing patriotic NASCAR fans are truly fearsome creatures. By definition they’re always the ones in power practicing discrimination- even when they’re not.. :-)
(4) In the 21st Century the VRA appears to be one of the means by which the Federal government ensures that southern political power remains so dispersed and gerrymandered that none of these states will ever have the courage to invoke the 10th Amendment and truly challenge the Federal government on its accelerating Constitutional overreach.
(5) Beware the law of unintended consequences!
1) Northern generals didn’t give blacks voting rights – the U.S. Constituion did.
2) The KKK’s most active area geographicially was in Indiana, Chicago, Cleveland, Pittsburgh and other cities affected by the Great Northern Migration – it wasn’t a “southern” organization.
3) The Voting Rights Act applies equally in the entire country and to any race wherever existing government entities systematically structure voting rules to exclude racial minorities. One of the most recent cases is in Wyoming regarding Indian tribes
In the News
Yeah, I saw that on the news tonight and almost dropped my after-dinner libation.
New York, welcome to the family! :)