Thus we have the light brown US Attorney General Eric Holder taking offence at Representative John Culbertson (R-Texas) quoting a former Democratic party activists to the effect that the 2008 intimidation of voters by club-bearing Black Panthers in Philadelphia was the most serious such act he had witnessed in his career. Holder replied:
When you compare what people endured in the South in the 60s to try to get the right to vote for African Americans, and to compare what people were subjected to there to what happened in Philadelphia - which was inappropriate, certainly that…to describe it in those terms I think does a great disservice to people who put their lives on the line, who risked all, for my people.Interesting. For the Attorney General "my people" is not the citizens of the United States, but only those with an African ancestor. And he seems to think that the wrong done to "his people" until the 1960s means that said people should not, today, be held to the legal standard that some brave individuals did, indeed, die to uphold.
So, an advocate of separate legal standards for black people. In what way is that different in principle to the Jim Crow laws that the Democratic party imposed in the South for the ninety years before the 1960s?
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For those who are "light, bright, and damn near white" and who have profited far above their
ReplyDeleteless 'skilled' brethren, due to Affirmative Action, class snobbery and familial self-promotion + political connections, the pathetic claim of representing "my people" has an echo of the familiar monetary clink of "I got mine."
On the other hand, Texas Republican complaints about violations of the voting rights of Philadelphia blacks are merely laughable. This is hardly something they lose sleep over. The great Blame Game rolls onward.
Black pastors have been selling the votes of their parishioners for decades. How have they guaranteed those votes, if not by intimidation? Of course in Britain, not to be left behind, ethnic group leaders have been given the keys to the safe through deliberately negligent voter registration, gross abuse of the postal vote and the lack of voter identification at the ballot box.
ReplyDeleteWell, actually it is true that they have been selling their congregation's votes for years, but this was perceived as a bloc vote which brought them much more recognition and/or access to favours than merely voting individual consciences. It guaranteed a degree of patronage or at least help should a member of the congregation fall foul of the law or have serious DUI problems. Or that is the theory! Whether the individual pastor was able to make
ReplyDeletegood on this would depend on who was in office at the time and how strong his contacts were.