Dear Black People — If Your Friends Are Republicans, They Are Your Enemy
Blocking Voting Rights reform is non-negotiable
I have some Republican friends. It is getting close to cutting them all off and blocking them. Friendship is friendship but voting rights is non-negotiable. African Americans can’t go back and won’t go back.
You hear me?
I refer to them as your enemy because they are electing the people who are stopping African Americans from legally voting as is their right. They are in the way of reform. They are, by voting for these Republicans, voting for disenfranchisement, and supporting it.
Right now, fifty Republican Senators and two Democrats are holding up a vote on voting rights in the U.S. Congress. This is just a vote to hold a vote. They won’t let it happen.
We know why too — it would likely pass, or maybe it wouldn’t but we would then all know who is a bigot and who isn’t. Who would violate every concept of equal justice and who wouldn’t. And who is lame and who isn’t.
I know this sounds harsh. It should be. Medgar Evers took a bullet in the back for those voting rights. James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman were murdered in Mississippi in 1964 for those voting rights we now have. Jimmy Lee Jackson murdered just because he wanted to vote. The Rev. James Reeb murdered just because he thought Black people should have a right to vote.
This is real. I am really not sure Tim Scott, African American U.S. Senator from South Carolina, a Republican, gets it. In fact, he’s lost on this issue. His explanation and excuses don’t cut it.
Earth to Tim: there was no fraud in the last election. The Republican candidate lost. You should be ashamed to vote with your party to stop a vote for the right to vote.
In addition, there is no history of fraud in recent American elections. These new laws passed by multiple states are not designed to make it easier for people to vote; they are designed to make it more difficult. They are designed to stop people from voting so a minority of the electorate can control power in America.
The laws that were set to be voted upon but for the Republicans stopping a vote are designed to guarantee the right to vote for all Americans. This includes African Americans and Native Americans most specifically.
If you want to know about specific instances of voter suppression and outright state hostility to stop Black people from voting, check this story from Georgia which is disturbing:
In Quitman, the story above, Black voters voted and won. They played by the rules of the game. The system didn’t like it. They were arrested for being citizens. The Republican Party does not want Black people to vote.
In North Dakota, after Democrats won a U.S. Senate seat in 2012, North Dakota Republicans intentionally changed the law making it pretty much impossible for Native Americans to cast votes. They were helpful in that they vote for Democrats usually.
Most of them lived in tribal lands and a change in the voting laws in North Dakota disenfranchised Native American voters. It was again a shrinking, unpopular party using its diminishing power to stop people from exercising their voting rights.
Stacy Abrams, in her book, Our Time is Now, knows the evil of voter suppression first hand. Abrams lost the governor’s race in Georgia in 2018 to Bryan Kemp. Kemp kicked thousands of Black people off the voting rolls illegally (as Georgia Secretary of State) that year.
Abrams politely accuses the Republicans of twisting the rules. She also accuses her own party of failing to take the steps necessary to prevent voter suppression and disenfranchisement.
“Full citizenship are the bare minimum one should expect from the government,” Abrams writes. Abrams also writes that the Republicans and others seeking to stop Black people from voting are using “every tool possible to limit access to political power.” They are clinging to a “monochromatic American identity,” in other words — white, and protected and privileged in a white supremacist laden caste system. These tactics are evil and racist.
My late uncle was a Republican. He was a proud member of the party of Frederick Douglass. He was born just 20 years after the death of Douglass. If he were alive he would not be standing with the current Republican Party. He would be demanding voting rights for all including African Americans.
The Republican Party is not the friend or ally of Black people on voting. Your Republican friends cannot justify this attempt to roll the clock back to another time.
And don’t believe the lie that they are trying to improve access. They aren’t. If those who can vote, do get to vote, Republicans know they will be voted out. That is their greatest fear and the reasons why they are against democracy and voting rights for all.
Afterword
In the end, check out the following from Greg Palast. He explains one of the Republican laws that allows anyone to challenge anyone’s right to vote. And they can challenge an unlimited number of voters:
Greg Palast & Voting Suppression by Republicans in Georgia (video link)
