2 Yrs Ago, USSC Said There Isn’t Enough Racism In America To Justify The Voting Rights Act

[Triana]

REALLY?

Two years ago next Thursday, Chief Justice John Roberts walked into the Supreme Courtroom, took his seat in the Court’s center chair, and then, after waiting for his colleagues to dispose of some less-closely watched business, he began to tell a fairy tale about a nation redeemed.

Once upon a time, Roberts began, “voting discrimination against African-Americans was so entrenched and pervasive in 1965 that to cite just one example, less than 7% of African-Americans of voting age in Mississippi had been able to register to vote.” But then, Roberts told the Courtroom, America set aside this past. “There are examples of progress, more poignant than the numbers,” the chief justice claimed. “During the Freedom Summer of 1964 in Philadelphia, Mississippi, three men were murdered while working in the area to register African-American voters. On Bloody Sunday in Selma, Alabama in 1965, police beat and used tear gas on hundreds marching in support of enfranchising African-Americans. Today, both Philadelphia and Mississippi and Selma, Alabama have African-Americans mayors.”

“Our country has changed,” Roberts wrote in the opinion he delivered that day, Shelby County v. Holder. It has wiped away so much of its racist past that the “extraordinary measures” employed by a key provision of the Voting Rights Act could no longer be justified.

Wednesday night, a white man walked into an historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina. He sat inside the congregation for an hour, as churchgoers engaged in Bible study. Then he announced to the African American congregants that they are “taking over our country,” and he opened fire. This murderer killed nine men and women, more people than those who were killed in the Philadelphia murders and Bloody Sunday combined.

THE REST:

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2015/06/18/3671107/two-years-ago-supreme-court-said-isnt-enough-racism-justify-voting-rights-act/

[eppur_se_muova]

1. A do-over is called for ... nt

[gollygee]

2. Kick

The Supreme Court is why the 2016 election is so important.

[Triana]

4. THIS. n/t

[mythology]

3. A good article