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Jewish World Review August 10, 2005 / 5 Av,
5765
Linda Chavez
On 40th anniversary of civil rights triumph, Dem bigs try to frighten folks away from truth
http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com |
Passage of the Voting Rights Act in August 1965 was a proud
moment in U.S. history. For the first time, millions of African Americans
living in the Deep South, who had been excluded from fully participating in
the political process for 200 years, were finally enfranchised. The battle
to secure those rights cost many lives of both blacks and whites. So why is
it that some black leaders have taken the occasion of the 40th anniversary
of this seminal event to engage in hate speech?
On Saturday, thousands of activists gathered in Atlanta to
commemorate the signing of the Voting Rights Act. Speakers at the rally
included House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.; Rep. John Lewis,
D-Ga.; Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif.; and entertainers Harry Belafonte, Dick
Gregory and Greg Mathis, a Michigan Superior Court judge who stars in his
own TV series. But instead of celebrating the triumph of this great law,
many if not most of the speakers used the occasion to try to scare
African Americans into thinking the Republicans in Congress and President
Bush were about to rescind the protections the Act guarantees.
There was much talk of "stolen" elections. Rep. Barbara Lee,
D-Calif., said, "The last two elections were stolen. They were stolen and so
we will not rest until we reclaim our democracy, and this is what today is
all about." Judge Mathis referred to the 2000 elections as "the biggest
election crime in history." He told the enthusiastic crowd that the
"thieves" in the Republican Party "need to be locked up." Harry Belafonte
warned, "We must stand vigilant, as there are those among us who would steal
our liberty and steal our souls."
Belafonte referred to blacks serving in the Bush administration
as "black tyrants," and went even farther in an interview with Marc Morano
of CNSNews.com. "Hitler had a lot of Jews high up in the hierarchy of the
Third Reich," Belafonte told Morano, an anti-Semitic canard meant to smear
as neo-Nazi both the Bush administration and the African Americans who serve
in it.
You'd think by the vicious rhetoric at the march that President
Bush was trying to revoke the Act. Nothing of the sort is true. Most
sections of the landmark legislation are permanent, including the ban on
literacy tests, once a favorite method to keep qualified black voters from
exercising their right to vote. Certain provisions of the Act most
notably Section 5, which requires covered jurisdictions to submit even the
most minor changes in voting procedures to the Department of Justice for
pre-clearance will expire in 2007, but they were always meant to be
temporary. Indeed, these provisions might have been declared
unconstitutional, despite the incredible recalcitrance of Southern
politicians in 1965, but for the promise that they would expire after a
time.
Congress should drop the pre-clearance provision of the Voting
Rights Act and another section enacted in 1975 requiring non-English ballots
to be provided in some jurisdictions. The pre-clearance provision makes
little sense today. There is no evidence that jurisdictions covered by
Section 5 many of them now governed by African-American politicians
would try to disenfranchise black voters.
The irony is that no prominent Republican politician is even
suggesting that Section 5 or the bilingual ballot provisions of the Voting
Rights Act not be extended when they expire in 2007. To the contrary, House
Speaker Dennis Hastert, Majority Leader Tom Delay and Judiciary Committee
Chairman James Sensenbrenner want these provisions extended another 25
years. But that won't stop some demagogues from spewing hate and spreading
lies.
JWR contributor Linda Chavez is President of the Center for Equal Opportunity. Her latest book is "Betrayal: How Union Bosses Shake Down Their Members and Corrupt American Politics". (Click HERE to purchase. Sales help fund JWR.)
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