Supreme Injustice

As you’ve all heard by now, the Supreme Court voted 5 to 4 to gut the Voting Rights Act.  This monumental insult has been widely vilified by citizens and organizations everywhere.  Yet there seems to be no outrage from leaders of color.

I don’t know about you but I expected to hear screams and cries of “racism” from Revs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.  I expected Ben Jealous, president of the NAACP, to be on CNN the night the decision was read.  I thought the leaders of LaRaza would be calling on the entire Latino & Hispanic communities to be outraged.  Yet nary was a peep heard.

To give some of these folks their due, National Action Network, Rev. Al Sharpton’s organization, has a statement front and center on the website.  I signed a petition on the national NAACP site that popped up.  However there was no mention of this decision on the Jackson site for Rainbow Coalition/PUSH.  There was, however, a statement about Paula Deen.  The LaRaza site also makes no mention of the decision.  Needless to say most of the site was devoted to the Senate immigration bill and Michelle Obama attending the national convention.  There is even a report on the DOMA decision about same-sex marriage.  But nothing about the Voting Rights Act, an act that was designed to push voting rights back to the reconstruction era.

Why, you may ask, was this decision reached?  What, you may wish to know, is the purpose behind this decision?  There has been much discussion about this in my circles and I would imagine many of you are wondering the same.  Why?

Let’s look toward the future for that answer.  In almost every demographic projection by scientists, mathematicians and census bureaus, by the year 2040 the US will be majority people of color.  The single largest group will be comprised of Latino/Hispanic who are born here or will have immigrated here.  The next largest group will be Blacks followed by Asians.  Thus the majority of American citizens will look vastly different from the look of today.  Others and I believe it is that projection which has resulted in the egregious decision made by the Supreme Court.  How will it be possible for the minority to continue to rule a majority?  By enacting legislation now that will have serious impact on the future.  This decision and others like it (the horrific decision giving corporations the rights of individuals comes to mind) is a way for Whites to continue to maintain control even as they become the majority.

It is obvious that the Whites in power carefully studied their history looking at South Africa’s past practice of apartheid and giving it a modern spin.  Look at the myriad of decisions that have been enacted in Arizona.  Enslaving people by taking away their knowledge of their own history is a very insidious way of enslavement.  Giving police the right to stop and frisk as they do in New York is a method of enslavement.  Making people carry papers showing they are American citizens in a sly method of enslavement.  Within the urban areas of Chicago, Dallas, Minneapolis and others, poor neighborhoods are being gentrified and suburban born Whites are moving in.  The residents who stayed through White flight and urban blight are being moved to the suburbs.  The myth of scattered housing perpetrated by HUD is another way of moving people of color to the suburbs where they will have no access to city services.  This is not happenstance.  These plans were hatched a long time ago when corporate heads, politicians and others saw the projections that have only recently become public.

Public schools have fallen prey to this plan.  Schools have become feeder systems to prisons.  Charter schools are funded by corporate heads to create workers for the companies.  Media organizations are allowed to own television stations, radio stations and newspapers in the same cities, something formerly against the law.  They have consolidated all the information and entertainment we enjoy and divide us with wedge issues like Paula Deen and same sex marriage.  Or divert our attention by making entertainment stories news or focusing on the NBA draft.

This decision is a blatant attempt to disenfranchise Black and Brown people.  There is a method to this madness and this method has been in place a lot longer than any of us would care to admit.  There is a clear and present danger (to borrow from Tom Clancy) to U.S. citizens of color and we would be well to heed it. The saying goes “Those who don’t know their history are doomed to repeat it.”   Truer words, in this instance, have never been spoken.