Yesterday, August 6, was the 56th anniversary of the signing of the Voting Rights Act.
As historian Heather Cox Richardson notes, we now stand at yet ANOTHER existential crisis in this country over voting rights, and whether it is the individual states or the federal government who gets to decide and to enforce our Constitution and the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments which extended universal suffrage to our Black citizens.
One doesn't need to be much of a student of history to be aware of how White southerners have fought against Black equality for centuries, often using "states rights" as their justification -- including for the Civil War.
During my lifetime and yours, Black Americans have been bloodied, beaten, and killed for registering to vote, voting at all, or demonstrating for the vote. This is not even to mention being murdered while walking, running, or driving.
One doesn't need to be much of a lawyer or Constitutional scholar to understand that the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments gave the federal government the power to enforce implementation of the rights they made explicit for Black Americans -- because the states had already, in the late 19th century, proven that they could find ways, including gerrymandering, to restrict these rights.
Yet over and over again, conservative White institutions -- most recently the Supreme Court lead by Republican John Roberts in the 2013 Shelby County vs. Holder case, and again this year in Brnovich v. DNC -- have stripped away voting rights and protections that ensure equal access to the ballot for those Whites seek to suppress.
White racism not only lives in the U.S., but continues actively to fight to maintain White power through decisions such as these and through current Republican state efforts to restrict voting rights.
The bottom line White Americans continue to resist is that racism is embedded in White dehumanization of Black people in order to have justified their enslavement -- and now their mass incarceration -- for White economic and social benefit.
The American history some of you don't want to learn or acknowledge is that White people committed genocide against native North American civilizations living here sustainably for more than 12,000 years in order to remove them and take their land; and then tortured, murdered, exploited, oppressed, imprisoned, and continue to discriminate against Black people in order to build the White wealth from which we ALL, rich or poor, as White people benefit.
Yours or mine or even our ancestors may not be the hands that held the whips. And still, we own homes and drive cars and get jobs and receive college loans and experience unrestricted rights thanks to a system that privileges our white skin by disadvantaging others.
Once you learn or acknowledge the reality of American history, you are then morally accountable for doing something.
Here are a few, but hardly all!, ideas for ways you can join me in this effort:
* ensure your children and other family members learn history civics, and media literacy, and that all equally benefit from quality public education
* #stoprepublicans, who as a party are seeking to suppress Voting Rights for Black people and others of color
* donate time and/or $ to ensure everyone can and does vote #GOTV
* vote for policies and programs that provide reparations, even in seemingly small ways, for all that has been stolen from people in the making of this nation. These include tax policies that transfer wealth from the 1% to public services for all. Recognize that the amassing of such wealth does not square with the language in our Declaration of Independence or Constitution for democracy
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