THE VOTE, WHO SHOULD HAVE IT?

by Ruth A. Sheets

The answer to the question about the right to vote seems to depend these days, maybe for the whole history of our nation on who those in power think are worthy of the honor.  Our founders, of course saw only rich white men as capable of deciding who should govern.  I have wondered where that idea sprang from and alas, I know the answer is, there was no spring, just a constant consistent downplaying of women for millennia.  This was accompanied by the powerful belief within those same rich white men that they got to their positions of prominence either by their own efforts or because their family line was simply superior to the lines of the less successful.

The question of Black people voting did not cross the minds of the founders, well, perhaps one might have considered it but after careful thought, dismissed the idea.  Bringing it up in the Constitutional Convention would have been heresy.  They couldn’t even count slaves as full persons.  That was good, though because the slave states would have had even more power than they already had, which, of course, they didn’t deserve since slaves had no rights at all.

And, the Indigenous people here.  They were immediately dismissed by the founders as not even human, just savages deserving of being wiped off the face of the earth.  How could such creatures ever be citizens of anything?

Over time some less wealthy white men were added to the voting rolls because maybe, it made us look more like a democracy, you know, the thing we claimed to be.  All kinds of strategies were employed though, to make sure those poor white men voted in certain ways up to and including personal threats.

After the Civil War, when enslaved people across the country were officially freed, many white Americans could not imagine them voting.  The 15^th Amendment to our Constitution was supposed to take care of that, but as we all know, it didn’t.  For more than a century the descendants of the founders put every obstacle in the way of Black Americans being able to vote.  You will remember the imprisonment and forced labor of Black men for insignificant “crimes” and the unaffordable poll taxes.  Then there were the “literacy” tests requiring recitations of the Constitution and more obscure documents given to Black citizens as well as unworthy white men.

And, who can forget the lynchings of citizens by white individuals, mobs, and local officials, more than 4,000 known acts of terror totally unpunished, and far more never reported at all.  The goal of all these measures, make voting seem and be out of reach of Black Americans.

Women fought actively for the right to vote for more than 70 years and when the right was granted, only white women were “permitted” to vote in most places for another nearly 5 decades.  Activist Fannie Lou Hamer was beaten nearly to death for having the audacity to want to register to vote in Mississippi in 1962, and others were killed just putting forward the idea that every American citizen should be able to vote and with as few obstacles as possible.  That is in my lifetime. 

Here we are in 2021 and a bunch of white men are at it again.  This time they have some help from white women who have forgotten how hard it was for women to get the vote.  These particular white men are not just the men of British descent of 1787 but include all kinds of men of European descent who have become white under the radar.  And, white Cubans feel their opposition to Castro in Cuba should now make them white in America too. 

These white and newly “white” men and their female white allies have been passing all kinds of voter suppression laws in state legislatures targeted at people of color, young people, and disabled persons.  They, like the founders think these are people who are unworthy to have the rights of American citizens even though they have citizenship.  The white folks perpetrating these crimes against the United States are Republican, nearly to a person.  They are afraid their privilege might not hold up if those groups can vote with ease. 

A difficult thing for me to swallow is that as in the past, the targeted groups have nowhere to turn for help against this onslaught.  “The Supreme Court!” you cry.  Well, not so fast.  In 2013, the Court ruled that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was essentially void because the states that had been abusing people’s rights were now good little boys and girls and weren’t doing that anymore.  They lied which was obvious when within the next few days, those very same “good little boys and girls” were already putting all kinds of voter restrictions in place targeting all the same people the Voting Rights Act was passed to protect.  Did the Supreme Court correct, saying “We are sorry. We were wrong. We take back our decision.”  Not on your life.  They have doubled down and are approving all kinds of voter restrictions particularly in the former Confederacy.

Can those being disenfranchised count on Congress to help, perhaps with another Voting Rights Act that fixes the “problems” with the 1965 Act so the Court can’t dismiss it so easily?  Well, they could.  There are several voting rights bills in play, but not a single Republican, you remember, those rich white men (and a few rich white women) are still at it.  Not a single one voted for even debating the issue when the “Freedom to Vote Act,” a supposed bipartisan compromise, came before the Senate.  A filibuster was declared and not only did that shut off any chance of debate, but Republican legislators didn’t even have to stand up and defend their unamerican position.

What I have come to understand is that white men in power are still acting like little children in a privileged family where whatever they want, they get.  They don’t have to work for it beyond what they want to do even if they have to be sneaky and underhanded.  They don’t have to associate with people who aren’t like them in any meaningful ways, and they marry into families where their anger and selfishness are understood and tolerated and they never really have to grow up at all.  

Well, it is time for the rich white male Republican members of Congress and the Supreme Court to grow up.  I get it that your privilege is part of your everyday existence, and that people not like you are scary.  Denying American citizens their fundamental rights is childish.  You would do better to have a platform of caring for this nation and its people that you can stand on so a broader spectrum of people would support you, but alas, you have nothing but oppression in your quiver, and you call it stopping fraud and other buzz words and phrases that are synonyms for oppression. 

Unfortunately, the rest of the country needs you to be adult enough to see that we live in a democracy and that requires people who are citizens to be able to vote with little difficulty and for you to see to it.  It is not an honest American challenge to see how hard you can make it for non-white, young, disabled persons, and others you don’t like to vote.  Republican state legislators have forgotten if they ever knew what it means to keep an oath they have made to our nation and what a democracy is.  Lies work very well to cement their positions. 

It is time you guys stop being child-men and child-women and try adulthood where people actually discuss things, debate, consider, then vote based on the honesty of an argument.  Majority Leader McConnell has let power get to his head so he can't see anything but the power he can wield.  Shame on the rest of you privileged white men and a few women who have chosen to sit silently or to vote to go along with his childishness.  You should be able to do better,

My question, do you privileged white folks in power even care about the Constitution or are you so scared you might not be the big cheese forever that you'll sabotage our democracy for whiteness?

A good test of your adulthood would be passing the Freedom to Vote Act (S. 2747) and the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act (S. 4). These bills are only mildly invasive of states’ rights which Republicans seem to revere so highly, but are crucial in helping fix our broken political system and build a democracy that works for all Americans, believe it or not, even you. 

I am betting white Republican childishness will win out.  However, I would love to be proven wrong this time.