Posted on 06/25/2013 5:26:10 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
The fate of the Voting Rights Act before the Supreme Court may hinge on whether it's right.
"Is it the government's submission that the citizens of the South are more racist than the citizens of the North?" John Roberts, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, asked that in February during oral arguments over the fate of the Voting Rights Act, a 1965 civil rights law. Donald Verrilli, the government's chief lawyer, said no. Not surprisingly, the Obama administration was not willing to assert that citizens in Southern states were statistically more likely to hold racist beliefs. Without making such a claim, though, it was harder for the government to defend the VRA's requirement that some states—but not others—seek federal approval (which lawyers call preclearance) before changing their voting laws. The eight states that are required to seek preclearance are determined by a formula intended to pick out areas with a history of discrimination. (Places that go for 10 years without discriminating can escape the requirement.) But if all states are equally racist (or not racist), why not treat them equally?
Certainly plenty of people outside of the South are racist, and plenty of people in the South are not. But here's the trouble: there's social science evidence that, 150 years after the Civil War, Southern states do have bigger racism problems than states outside the South. And many of them are the same states that the VRA requires to seek federal approval before changing their voting laws.
The key study on this subject is new. In May, Christopher Elmendorf and Douglas Spencer—law professors at the University of California-Davis and the University of Connecticut, respectively—released a paper arguing that the list of states required to obtain federal approval under the VRA "remarkably" mirrors "the geography of anti-black prejudice" in the United States. "What we have generated," Elmendorf says, "is an answer to the question that the chief justice asked during oral arguments and [Verilli] was either unable or unwilling to answer." The answer, they argue, is yes.
Elmendorf and Spencer used data from the 2008 National Annenberg Election Survey, which asked non-blacks to rank their own racial group and blacks regarding intelligence, trustworthiness, and work ethic. Respondents ranked their racial group above blacks by an average of 15 points in each of these categories, perhaps proving the Avenue Q claim that "everyone's a little bit racist." Elmendorf and Spencer, however, only counted a person as "prejudiced" if he thought his racial group was more superior to blacks than the average person—and only if he thought so in two or more of the three categories. That is, a respondent could think his race was a lot better than blacks and still not count as racist under their methodology.
The results were striking: the researchers' mathematical model suggests that of the seven states in the country with the highest percentage of people who are biased against black people, six are Southern states—Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina—required to seek federal approval for election law changes under the VRA. Arizona and Alaska, the other two states required to get the feds' permission before changing their election laws, ranked much lower in anti-black bias. But as Elmendorf and Spencer note, these states are presumably required to seek that permission because of other bias—anti-Latino in Arizona and anti-Native American in Alaska—which their study did not measure. (Besides the eight states mentioned above, the VRA requires some counties and municipalities in seven other states to seek federal permission to change election rules.)
The researchers crunched the data several different ways to make sure they were getting valid results. But "whichever approach you pick, the Deep South states are close to the top," Elmendorf says.
Elmendorf and Spencer's study may have come too late: The Supreme Court is widely expected to strike down the portion of the VRA that governs which states are and are not required to seek the feds' permission to change their election rules. If that happens, Congress will have to come up with new rules to determine which states this section of the VRA should cover. If lawmakers decide to embrace Roberts' implication that states with more racist attitudes should receive special scrutiny, Elmendorf and Spencer's study suggests they could end up with a list of VRA-covered states that looks a lot like today's.
One thing is for sure - AG Witholder’s quip about white America being afraid of having a conversation about race is total bullspit. They thought they could silence us by tossing the race card but (like everything else they do) they overreached and robbed the term of any meaning or relevance.
Liberals don't believe Blacks are human. They believe they are super-human--avatars of "social justice" sent here from Above for the sole purpose of exposing the imperfections of mere mortals. They are apparently without fault despite their rural Southern origins, speech, and religious worship. This is the liberal answer to hundreds of years of being treated as sub-humans. Overcompensating in the name of "evening out the score" is the only thing they know.
I'm reminded of that episode of the original "Star Trek" (forget the title) where the Enterprise and the Klingons are fighting over who's going to rule over this little backwater planet where the natives are actually pure energy beings who are zillions of years ahead of both of them.
Maybe one day Blacks will finally be treated as humans. Being treated as superhuman is still being treated as other than human.
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One of my best friends is a black man from North Carolina. Born and raised down south, then he went in the Navy where he retired after 30 years. He told me the most racist places in the country were up north. He said at least in the South you know where you stand with another man, if he doesn’t like you he will tell you to your face. He said he can deal with that. He said up north people talk behind your back and stab you in the back and they just don’t like black people. Then he looked at me and said he had proof. He goes on to say that Atlanta, Birmingham, and a lot of the big Southern cities were once mostly white because the black man left and went up north to find work. He said gradually they got tired of not being able to find work and got tired of being put down by yankees that they started moving back to their southern homes, knowing damn well that that’s where they belonged, where most people got along with each other and southerners were not phonies like yankees and didn’t stab you in the back. Lem was my friend’s name. He’s a retired Navy Master Chief now living in his hometown of Elizabeth City, NC. He’s a smart man, and by the way the listens to nothing but country music, Hank Williams being his favorite singer and he hates rap.
Not so much, any more. :-) 'Tis why I wound up in the south. I graduated from college. Applied to Wal Mart, figuring just to make a few bucks to keep the lights on while I found a permanent job in my profession (haha), and the wait list was over 400 people deep. I said "Forget this" moved down south, and never looked back.
Some time ago, I was working in IT for a hospital down here. Buddy of mine was working IT in a hospital in Maine. Our job descriptions were almost exactly the same, word for word.
And.....he was earning exactly 1/2 of what I was earning. Lest you think that I was getting rich, let me disabuse you of that notion. Taxes, insurance, cost of living, etc are all much higher in Maine, as well.
If you're just getting by up there, you're far ahead of most other people. And when you throw 6-7 months of miserable winter on top, why would anyone stay?
Only complaint that I have is that it's going to be 90+ today. I love the south, but thank God for AC.
“I have heard that many slaves did not want to leave the plantations once they were freed, I mean where would they go? On the plantations, they had food, shelter, and relative safety. Not all slave owners were cruel to the slaves”.
May 23, 2013...DENVER (AP) – A Saudi national serving eight years to life in prison in Colorado after being convicted in 2006 of sexually assaulting a housekeeper and keeping her a virtual slave for four years has been ordered to attend a parole hearing on Tuesday
May 25, 2013
Kenyan Woman Kept as Domestic Slave for Months by Saudi Diplomats…in Virginia Posted on May 25, 2013 by creeping Arab Muslim slavery of black Africans isn’t confined to the Middle East and Africa. via Kenyan Woman Claims She Was Kept as Domestic Slave for Months | NBC4 Washington. A 25-year-old Kenyan woman has come forward with allegations that she was kept as a domestic slave for three months by Saudi Arabian diplomats living in Northern Virginia.
Jan 29, 2012. CHICAGO—A Taiwanese official who pleaded guilty to mistreating two housekeepers brought over from the Philippines to work in her Missouri home will soon be deported, a judge ruled Friday. Liu Hsien-hsien, director of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Kansas City, Missouri, was arrested in November for allegedly treating her Filipino housekeepers like slaves. She reached a plea deal with prosecutors that allowed her to avoid spending up to five years in prison if convicted of the single charge of fraud in foreign labor contracting.
Slavery is here, it is legal in sharia law and will be found in Detroit, Murfreesboro and anyplace Moslems rule. The left is to blame for slavery in the past, present and future.
The left is also a product of social devolution. They can't compete and lower the bar by affirmative action and giving handouts to enslave those who really need a hand up.
I’ll take Mother Jones with the consideration it deserves. Every part of the country has its ghosts and issues with race. White progressives are the worst offenders across the board and they usually live in white enclaves in the city away from the poor areas.
I was quoting a 1950’s commedian...not my words. But, having been stationed in Denver, Loring, Maine, and Germany, I had a southern boy’s fill of shoveling snow, and now I’m way too old to do it.
Lol
Yep
I really care
I'm sorry to hear that. You've a nodding familiarity with snow and cold, then.
I grew up around Bangor. Snow might be a little different, depending on if the storms went up the coast, or inland. But one, sure-fire, take it to the bank guarantee was that the temps in Limestone and Caribou would be 10-15 degrees colder than Bangor. Must be the lay of the land or something.
Brrrrrrrrrrr. I don't miss it.
It was the coldest I ever want to be, but Germany was a wet, cold to the bone snow; the temps were not as low as Maine, but it often felt colder.
I was glad to get home to Georgia, USA.
That's all I need to know. The seventh state is the proof that the VRA is unfairly applied.
Secondly, what is the 2008 National Annenberg Election Survey and why do we accept it as accurate? I've seen a ton of very bad surveys, particularly from liberals.
Pollster1, are you familiar with this survey and its methods? Any comments?
The Annenberg Public Policy Center may elect to make survey and other research data ("Research Data") available to certain registered Users of the Service, at APPC's sole discretion. The National Annenberg Election Survey (NAES) data sets are available only to scholars affiliated with a college, university, or other academic setting. The data sets are not made available to any other individual, organization, or entity not affiliated with a college, university, or other academic setting. In return for receiving the NAES data, the requestor agrees to be legally bound and agrees not to use or disclose the NAES Data Set for any purpose other than academic research. Use of the Data is limited to analysis and/or interpretation. Anyone granted the opportunity to receive the Research Data, agrees not to reproduce, publicly distribute, publicly display, post at a website, publish, or otherwise publicly use the data set in whole or part, without the advance written permission of the Annenberg Public Policy Center. To request permission, please contact: dstinnett@asc.upenn.edu or by mail at:
Annenberg Public Policy Center University of Pennsylvania 202 S. 36th St.
So you've got a dataset that isn't public, academics and those with access are barred from revealing its details, and that cannot be discussed, used or disseminated publicly without written permission of the Annenberg Public Policy Center.
Garbage in, garbage out. It's a junk poll and a junk finding.
For instance, very often in Consumer Reports or other ratings agencies the differences between first and last place are measured in the hundredths or thousandths of a percent. Let's see the dataset and the first and last place numbers, the raw numbers. This is liberal agitprop. I bet my life on it.
Mother Jones is not exactly an objective publication.
Having lived 30 years in Seattle, and 30 years in Houston, I can tell you that right NOW, Houston has the better racial climate, and less racism.
Annenberg's rolling survey accurately measures what it purports to measure, without sleaze. There are issues (occasionally major ones), both in the selection and wording of questions and in the interpretation of the results, but a careful reading will give useful information. Beyond that, I'll just say that it's difficult to assess a survey of that size and complexity either briefly or in a public forum.
How can someone assess the difference between “racists” without the underlying data set? The difference between the best/worst might be a tiny fraction. That’s my main point. Why are they limiting its use to academics at institutions?
My point was that they are not sleazy, just biased. And you're right, that the effect size and how the variable was measured are essential for understanding whether this means anything.
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