November 17, 2018
Yesterday, Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Stacey Abrams, acknowledged that she would not prevail in her race to become the nation’s first Black woman governor. As she forcefully detailed, her speech was not a “concession,” because conceding would necessitate acknowledging defeat in a fair contest and Georgia’s election was the antithesis of that. In a stunning act of corruption, Brian Kemp refused to relinquish control of the state’s electoral apparatus, deeming it proper that he be both a competitor in, and arbiter of, the election for the state’s highest office. Kemp capped an eight year campaign of massive suppression of Black votes by closing polling places and withholding such basic supplies as sufficient numbers of paper ballots or power cords for electronic voting machines!
As Ari Berman details, between 2012 and 2016, Kemp “purged 1.5 million voters, twice as many as in the preceding four years.” He removed another 735,000 in the next two years. Nearly half of those purged were voters of color, in a state that is 60% white. 70% of the 53,000 registrations Kemp placed on a “pending” list were African American and 80% were voters of color, (Source: “Brian Kemp’s Winnin Georgia is Tainted by Voter Suppression,” by Ari Berman, MotherJones.com, 11/16/18). Kemp was not subtle. He was on record warning that if newly registered voters of color exercise their rights, Republicans would lose. Thanks to the Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Holder, in the absence of preclearance requirements, outcomes like this are sadly predictable.
The suppression of African American votes has a long and ugly history. Thus, it is no surprise that those with a vested interest in maintaining a racialized hierarchy would resort to age old tactics. For those people, who have a paralyzing fear of sharing power with Black people, Barack Obama’s election was a frightening echo of Reconstruction. During Reconstruction, 1400 Black people were elected to local, state and federal office, 16 of whom served in Congress (Source: “Georgia election fight shows that black voter suppression, a southern tradition, still flourishes,” by Frederick Knight, PBSNewsHour.com, 10/28/18). Then, as now, a raft of legal hurdles were erected, narrowly tailored for the express purpose of disenfranchising Black voters.
No discussion of the history of voter suppression can omit the campaign of violent intimidation that accompanied those laws. The Klan and other white vigilantes endeavored to make Black people pay for exercising their right to vote with their lives.
Those who place bureaucratic and legal obstacles in the path of Black people trying to vote know this history. They are well aware that voter suppression is a two pronged strategy, with violence as the other prong. That is the lens through which Cindy Hyde-Smith’s “joke” about lynching should be viewed. Any doubts about her intent were dispelled by the revelation that she was on record stating that making it “just a little more difficult” for liberals to vote was a “great idea,” (Source: “GOP Senator: It’s a ‘great idea’ to make it harder for liberal folks to vote,” by Michael Brice-Saddler, The Washington Post, 11/16/18).
These folks are showing us and telling us every day how they intend to stay in power. We’d be foolish not to take them at their word.
#FAIRFIGHTGEORGIA
#JOHNBARROWFORSECRETARYOFSTATE
#ESPYFORSENATE