Posted on 06/28/2013 8:44:58 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Is the Second Reconstruction over?
The first ended with the withdrawal of Union troops from the Southern states as part of a deal that gave Rutherford B. Hayes the presidency after the disputed election of 1876.
The second began with the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a century after Appomattox. Under the VRA, Southern states seeking to make even minor changes in voting laws had to come to Washington to plead their case before the Justice Department and such lions of the law as Eric Holder.
Southern states were required to get this pre-clearance for any alterations in voting laws because of systematic violations of the 14th and 15th amendment constitutional rights of black Americans to equal access to polling places and voting booths.
The South had discriminated by using poll taxes, gerrymandering and literacy tests, among other tactics. Dixie was in the penalty box because it had earned a place there.
What the Supreme Court did Tuesday, in letting the South out of the box, is to declare that, as this is not 1965, you cannot use abuses that date to 1965, but have long since disappeared, to justify indefinite federal discrimination against the American South.
You cannot impose burdens on Southern states, five of which recorded higher voting percentages among their black populations in 2012 than among their white populations, based on practices of 50 years ago that were repudiated and abandoned in another era.
You cannot punish Southern leaders in 2013 for the sins of their grandfathers. As Chief Justice John Roberts noted, black turnout in 2012 was higher in Mississippi than in Massachusetts.
Does this mean the South is now free to discriminate again?
By no means. State action that discriminates against minority voters can still be brought before the Department of Justice.
Even the "pre-clearance" provision of the VRA remains. All the court has said is that if Congress wishes to impose a pre-clearance provision on a state or group of states, Congress must have more evidence to justify unequal treatment than what "Bull" Connor did in Birmingham back in 1965.
Congress could pass a bill today authorizing Justice Department intervention in any state where the registration of blacks, Hispanics or Asians fell below 60 percent of that electorate.
What Congress can no longer do is impose conditions on Southern states from which Northern states are exempt. Washington can no longer treat the states unequally -- for that, too, is a violation of the Constitution.
The Roberts court just took a giant stride to restoring the Union.
Yet the hysterical reaction to the decision reveals a great deal.
What do critics say they are afraid of?
While conceding that immense progress has been made with the huge turnout of black voters in the South and the re-election of a black president, they say they fear that without the pre-clearance provision this would never have happened. And now that the provision no longer applies to the South, the evil old ways will return.
On several counts this is disheartening.
For what the critics of the court decision are saying is that, no matter the progress made over half a century, they do not trust the South to deal fairly and decently with its black citizens, without a club over its head. They do not believe the South has changed in its heart from the days of segregation.
They think the South is lying in wait for a new opportunity to disfranchise its black voters. And they think black Southerners are unable to defend their own interests -- without Northern liberal help.
In this belief there are elements of paranoia, condescension and bigotry.
Many liberals not only do not trust the South, some detest it. And many seem to think it deserves to be treated differently than the more progressive precincts of the nation.
Consider Wednesday's offering by Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson. The South, he writes, is the home of "so-called right-to-work laws" and hostility to the union shop, undergirded by "the virulent racism of the white Southern establishment," a place where a "right-wing antipathy toward workers' rights" is pandemic.
The South is the "the heartland of cheap-labor America. ... When it wants to slum, business still goes to the South." Then there are those "reactionary white Republican state governments."
Were a conservative to use the term "black" as a slur the way Meyerson spits out the word "white," he would be finished at the Post. Meyerson's summation:
"If the federal government wants to build a fence that keeps the United States safe from the danger of lower wages and poverty and their attendant ills -- and the all-round fruitcakery of the right-wing white South -- it should build that fence from Norfolk to Dallas. There is nothing wrong with a fence as long as you put it in the right place."
Harold looks forward to the day that a surging Latino population forces "epochal political change" on a detestable white South.
Of course I have been arguing race and south with him here since I joined here 13 years ago
It was my first taste of so called conservatives and their utter disdain for old line social conservatives or paleos or whatever you’d like to call us from the South.
I never knew some brethren so loathed us till this forum.
Some have even made a TV pundit name for themselves disparaging Dixie as a career in order to expunge America’s PC warts in general to suit their own ends.
I’m southern white and anyone ...black white or brown expects me to piss on my heritage or ancestry to sate their own bigotry has picked the wrong freeper
There is so much more to all this than you know frankly.....you’re a bit late to the party.
Early sign up dates whilst lovely do not guarantee conservatism
Mad Ivan...Sinkspur.... howlin..... non sequitur.......r9etb......murraymom.....cgeb.......ill bay....
I could go on and on....
Many south bashers here in time prove to be moderates at best and get caught in a Fresno net from time to time
I think NS got caught in a homo net.....
X to his credit is too wily for all that....a man on a mission all too personal
He’ll be fine.....don’t you worry about him....he may be my enemy but he is not foolish..... he’s actually rather bright.....leagues brighter than his posse....all the more pity
I can't think of many here that I could get into a fist fight with, but he was one. Good riddance to trash.
I think 0.E.O might be N-S. Some of the old N-S style is coming out in 0.E.O posts.
I keep posting to you because you keep posting to me and I figured you deserve an answer. Sorry it upset you so that my preferred country doesn’t include Dixie but that doesn’t mean you all can’t have a nice secession all on your own.
Maybe they can have it catered....hire a band. ;-)
Actually, 80% of all the armor in the U.S. military is south of the Mason-Dixon.
Just sayin'...
5.56mm
If they do then way things are going down there by the time they secede it'll be tacos and Mariachi.
¡Si, Se Puede!.....mañana ;-)
If you own the factory victory is yours....
The directin the Union is headed, I would say no.
Try it and you'll probably have an internal civil war well before the federal government reacts. And if you add up the Democrats and the Graham-McCain Republicans, you'll have a hard time getting to 50 percent.
And why is 50 percent the benchmark? Wouldn't you need more to make a major change in your status? Isn't that what the Founding Fathers would have thought? Isn't that what Calhoun would have thought if he was at all serious about minority rights? You won't get that kind of majority or supermajority.
But look what's going on here. You guys won. I haven't been following the story, but my impression is that the Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution wasn't going to let what happened 50 years ago determine how the Voting Rights Act was applied any more. Is that correct? Wasn't that something some of you have been complaining about for a long time?
And if the leader of the opposition is 2nd or 3rd generation socialist Harold Meyerson, then you guys won't have to worry about the decision going into effect. Of course, that's because the media was more focused on gay marriage, but still, who'd have thought the Court would do something like this?
But everbody assumes the topic here is secession. That's funny.
FWIW, Meyerson's magazine, The American Prospect is predicting the break-up of the solid Republican South, and saying it will be "good" by which they mean good for liberals, progressives, and (since Harold's admitted it) socialists. I haven't read the article and don't know if it's true, but I'd suspect the opposite. If the South is in play, you'll see Southern Democrats playing more important roles in the party, and that means more Clintons and Carters and fewer Obamas. I can't say that's a good thing, but it wouldn't make things worse.
Actually nooby, you started posting to me when I responded to another post about states and military enlistments, and I had pointed out that Utah, as almost the lowest enlisting state in America, did not belong in a category of high enlisting states.
Pointing out that Utah avoids military service, set you off, you started posting at me, and can’t bring yourself to let it go.
Often times when a new guy gets so suddenly aggressive and persistent, it indicates a retread with a history who is still carrying grudges.
Why would anyone hold a grudge against you? ;-)
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