DANGER: SCOTUS COULD INDULGE RACISTS

The radical rightwing Supreme Court of the United States is about to hear a case that could turn back the clock back 50 years on civil rights in our country. The case has to do with the idea that the federal government does not treat all sovereign states equally. A section of the Civil Rights Act of 1965 (Section 5) requires Department of Justice review of state level decisions that might affect a persons rights to vote. The requirement applies only to states that have a history of making racially motivated decisions. From the inception of America, everyone knows the laws were written to prevent black people from voting—including the Constitution. There was a bifurcation born out of a sense of the incorrectness of one person owning another person verses the sense of equal treatment under the law. Thomas Jefferson, a slave owner, believed all men were created equal but was totally convinced they could not live as equals. Black people would have to go somewhere else. It is no coincidence that the people of Liberia named their capital Monrovia after U.S. President James Monroe. The recent movie Lincoln caused the subject to reemerge as a dinning room conversation piece. The various succeeding governments passed numerous laws, which made it clear our choice was that we would live in a system of integration verses segregation; separate but equal was discarded early in that process.

Most of us can only shake our heads in disbelief that such old arguments concerning the merits and demerits of separate, or even “separate but equal” would reemerge. The political party background is that plantation owners; thus, slave owners were Democrats. When President Lyndon Johnson signed the civil rights act, a shift of party loyalty occurred; white people shifted en masse from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party. The reality of politics in a democracy is that “the person with the most votes wins”. Suddenly, with emancipation, white people went from being a majority to a being a minority; nevertheless, Republicans as the economic elite, were able to controlled state government, just as they controlled the nomination of extreme conservative Justices. However, as an integrated society, the black majority gained political power—it is a sign of social maturity.  

We can never go back. I don’t remember where the idea arose but I think it is a good analogy. Take a cup of coffee and carefully pour a layer of cream on top, then sir the coffee 100 times clockwise to mix in the cream in to the coffee and then stir the coffee 100 times counter clockwise to get the cream layer back on top. It will not work anymore then it will work to attempt to separate the races. The Supreme Court could make a huge mistake and try to stir 150 years backwards.

The bigger question, is, “Why is it that so many white people would want to suppress the voting rights of Democrats?” I believe it is because in the old plantation south many white people in that geographical region see the Democratic Party as the party of black people. As a person who believes in the truth of evolutionary psychology, I believe there is a learned focus of a broad genetic based xenophobia. I also believe we as intelligent individuals can learn to overcome the focused xenophobia’s just as we have learned to overcome other rational and irrational genetic based behaviors. Steel workers can learn overcome innate fear and walk high narrow beams. We can learn to overcome genetic 

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