JIM CROW RESURFACES AS SCOTUS SCUTTLES VOTING RIGHTS ACT

It's dispiriting to see the haste with which gleeful, white-Republican-dominated Southern legislatures pounced on the newfound opportunity to deny minorities their constitutional right to vote. Within hours of Tuesday’s Supreme Court decision effectively gutting the Voting Rights Act, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott declared on Twitter, “(U.S. Attorney General) Eric Holder can no longer deny Voter ID in Texas.” The Texas Department of Public Safety announced later in the day that on Thursday it would begin distributing photo IDs under a 2011 law that Holder’s lawyers had blocked under Section 5. In Mississippi, the secretary of state said her office would begin enforcing a pending voter ID law for primaries in June 2014. North Carolina Republicans said they plan swift action on a pending voter ID bill. These are yet more shameful instances of an entrenched, self-serving minority, resolutely clinging to power and privilege by damming up a rising demographic tide. However, “time and tide wait for no man,” leaving us to wonder when and with what consequences will the dam be breached?

SCOTUS engages in Catch-22 reasoning, saying the South has changed and no longer discriminates against racial minorities, therefore, the law is no longer necessary, overlooking the fact that the only reason for the change is the very law SCOTUS proposes to jettison.

Moreover, in saying the law is no longer necessary, SCOTUS contradicts Congress, which said it was when it overwhelmingly reauthorized the Voting Rights Act in 2006. The Supremes, in effect, tossed the ball back in Congress' court. It will be interesting to watch the hypocritical contortions resorted to by House Republicans to thwart the Act they endorsed only 7 years ago.    

Referring to the decision in which Justice Thomas, in effect, cast the deciding vote, Minnesota state legislator, Ryan Winkler, tweeted that there were "four accomplices to race discrimination and one Uncle Thomas." He later apologized for the remark. Hmmm.