Yesterday, Emily Badger of
The New York Times brought the travesty that is
the 2016 election into stark perspective: "The Electoral College is just one example of how an increasingly urban country has inherited the political structures of a rural past," she wrote. "Today, states containing just 17 percent of the American population, a historic low, can theoretically elect a Senate majority... The bias also shapes the House of Representatives."
Think about that. Seventeen percent of the population, all of which live in white, rural America, can decide not only the presidency for all of us, but the House and Senate majorities too. More to the point, not only can they do it, they just in fact did do it.
By now most of us are aware that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by roughly two million votes. Most people I talk to, however, are oblivious to the fact that Democrats also won the popular vote in the Senate and House races, but were denied the majority of seats. The sobering result of these defeats on every front is that in the matter of one election, our entire system of checks and balances within the United States government has been utterly annihilated.
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Black Americans vote in Alabama for the first time
after the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act |
Before going any further, I need to make a point. Namely, I don't want to downplay the very real injustice that was perpetrated against the majority of this nation's citizens, regardless to our colors. The reason I'll be focusing on African-Americans in particular from here forward is because it's vital to understand black history as every American's history. It is impossible to learn from past wrongs if you don't even know they occurred, much less feel connected to them. Indeed, we are all connected. The harm done to one of us eventually and inevitably spreads like cancer to the rest of us. Bearing that in mind...
Having the right to vote on paper means very little when disenfranchised people are systematically prohibited from casting their ballots. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 provided a political voice to people of color and brought America one small but vital step closer to achieving its ideal of liberty and justice for all. It wasn't perfect, but it was a desperately needed start.
After affording black Americans 60 years of voter protection,
the VRA was gutted in 2013 by the conservative led US Supreme Court. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was so angered by the court's decision she chose to orally dissent (speak from the bench) rather than provide a
written dissent only, the latter being the norm for SCOTUS. Speaking on behalf of herself and Justices Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan, Justice Ginsburg reaffirmed the need for voter protection against disenfranchisement and stated that the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as well as justice itself had been “disserved by today’s decision.”
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| The Voting Rights Act is as needed today as it was in 1965 |
In one SCOTUS ruling, the rights of black Americans were set back 60 years at minimum. The state of Texas quickly took advantage of the bench's decision by enacting laws that disproportionately and negatively impacted African-American voters; more southern states eventually followed suit. It wasn't until the contentious general election of 2016, however, that the end result
Justice Ginsburg had warned of would become agonizingly apparent.
Polling stations were closed down and/or moved without notice, making it all but impossible for the poorest of black, working people to vote. After all, if you can't afford to own a car then you likely can't afford to miss more time from work than your lunch hour allows for. Making phone calls to find out what the hell happened to your polling station and taking buses all over God's green earth are not lunch hour friendly activities.
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Five generations of one enslaved family. Nine of the 180
slaves owned by James Joyner Smith; they lived and
worked on Smith's cotton plantation in Beaufort, SC.
(Early 1800s, Library of Congress.) |
Even amidst all the obstacles, black women still found a way to make it work (just as women always do) and turned out to the polls in large numbers. This was accomplished throughout all social classes despite SCOTUS, only to be told early the next morning that black votes don't matter any more now than they did before African-Americans had the right to vote at all.
On July 12, 1787, the
Three-Fifths Compromise was enacted, which allowed Southern slave holders to count each of their human properties as 3/5 of one person. This was done so Southern states could claim a larger percentage of representation in the House. The added, albeit unlikely intended effect, also gave them a disproportionate advantage over electing future presidents. In other words, black slaves were semi-counted for purposes of representation in congress, yet not allowed to actually be represented by voting. The
compromise portion of the Three-Fifths Compromise was
about black slaves rather than for them.
How, I ask you, is "voting" today any different?
When only 17% of Americans decide who will make the laws for 100% of us, it is reasonable and valid to argue that any representation afforded us, just like with the Three-Fifths Compromise, is in name only. While particularly egregious to black Americans because of the history of slavery in this country followed by one and a half centuries of systematic disenfranchisement, the problem facing America has become an everybody issue. Most black Americans are urbanites, true, but not all urbanites (or even close) are black Americans. If your vote carries less than 1/5 of the legal power of a white, rural vote...
Well, I guess we'll just have to call it the One-Fifth Compromise. As was true in 1787, it's a "compromise" no disenfranchised person had a say in much less agreed to.
