White supremacy over everything?

December 12, 2017

Today’s special election in Alabama presents the starkest choice imaginable of what kind of country we’re going to be.  The question is whether voters will choose an exemplar of America’s id, a walking cauldron of seething hatreds, backwards lawlessness and predatory behavior, or an upstanding public servant with a reputation for integrity with whom voters have some policy disagreements.  Today will determine how many of us will choose white supremacy over everything else.

That may seem like a sweeping statement.  We’d like to think that this is just about those “backwards” people in Alabama and doesn’t implicate the rest of us.  The truth is that every article that pre-emptively lays the blame for a Democratic electoral loss at the feet of Black people, citing our lack of “enthusiasm,” while studiously ignoring the multi-faceted campaign of targeted voter suppression being waged nationwide, is blaming the victims of that disenfranchisement.  We need to understand that it is white supremacy that renders Black people invisible and overlooks the devastatingly consistent efforts to disempower us.

As an example, in an article in The New York Times analyzing Doug Jones’ chances of victory in Alabama, Richard Fausset (coincidentally author of the profile of the Nazi next door), interviewed ten people in front of a Wal-Mart and extrapolated from those conversations that Jones may lose due to Black voters’ insufficient engagement (Source:  “Black Voters Could Sway an Alabama Senate Race Rocked by Scandal,” by Richard Fausset, The New York Times, 11/28/17). Anyone with a nodding interest in civil rights knows that Alabama is Ground Zero for voter suppression.  John Lewis was famously beaten on “Bloody Sunday,” March 7, 1965 on the Edmund Pettus Bridge from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama marching for voting rights. Shelby County v. Holder, the 2013 Supreme Court case that eviscerated the Voting Rights Act by eliminating the preclearance requirement, was Shelby County, Alabama. In the aftermath of Shelby, the 2011 Alabama law requiring voters to have photo i.d. went into effect, impacting 10% of the state’s voters.  In 2015, Alabama closed 31 offices of the Department of Motor Vehicles in counties with the largest percentage of African American voters (Source:  “New lawsuit challenges Alabama voter ID law,” by Zachary Roth, MSNBC.com, 12/02/15).  In addition, Alabama relied on a century old felon disenfranchisement law that was enacted in 1901 with the express purpose of “establish[ing] white supremacy in this state,” (Source:  “Alabama governor signs law giving thousands of felons their right to vote back,” by Kira Lerner, ThinkProgress.com, 5/24/17, quoting the president of the Alabama Constitutional Convention).  Although Alabama’s disenfranchisement law was recently narrowed to define the crimes which merited disenfranchisement, the Republican Secretary of State, John Merrill refused to spend any funds on outreach to inform citizens of their reacquired rights (Source:  “Alabama Elections Chief is impeding voter registration because he’s not sure people want to vote,” by Kira Lerner, ThinkProgress.com, 8/3/17).

In light of ample evidence of the persistent and rigid barriers to Black empowerment in place in Alabama, news coverage that relies primarily on the tired trope of a lack of Black voter “enthusiasm” is lazy reporting that allows structural racism to remain hidden and lets too many of us off the hook.  Voter disenfranchisement and suppression efforts are rampant throughout the country and on the rise.  Since 2010, 23 states have enacted new restrictions making it more difficult to vote (Source:  “New Voting Restrictions in America,” The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law).  The swing state of Florida has one of the strictest felon disenfranchisement laws in the country, which deprives 1.68 million Floridians of the right to vote (Source:  “ACLU investing millions of dollars in Florida to restore ex-felons’ voting rights,” by Dave Weigel, The Washington Post, 7/31/17).  We know that Wisconsin’s strict voter ID laws suppressed 200,000 votes in a state Trump won by 22,748 votes (Source:  “Wisconsin’s Voter-ID Law Suppressed 200,000 Votes in 2016 (Trump Won by 22, 748)” by Ari Berman, The Nation, 5/9/17).  We know that 58% of white voters overlooked Trump’s racism, misogyny and corruption to put him in The White House.  The truth is, our nation’s only hope lies in ensuring that people of color have the unfettered right to vote.  So, win or lose in Alabama, the choice is ours.  Will we choose democracy or white supremacy over everything?