Voter Suppression and Institutionalized Recism

I have been reflecting on the period between Election Day and Insurrection Day, November 3rd through January 6th. It was difficult to see these events in perspective while they were unfolding. The experience was highly charged, and emotions were running high.

After the election, more than sixty lawsuits were filed. The plaintiffs asserted that “widespread voter fraud” had occurred, although they offered no proof to support their claims, and all but one of the suits was dismissed or the rulings went against the plaintiffs.

Here is an interesting observation. Although the plaintiffs claimed that fraud was widespread, their actual claims targeted specific locations. For instance, the claimed that fraud had occurred in Philadelphia, Detroit, and Milwaukie. Why did they choose these three cities? Why not Cleveland, for instance? It’s in the same region. If you draw a line from Philly to Milwaukie, Detroit and Cleveland are both on that line. Wouldn’t it make sense that the alleged fraud had occurred in Ohio, as well. For some reason, they showed no interest in overturning election results in Cleveland.

Another city where election results were contested was Atlanta. The outgoing president even called officials in Georgia and urged them personally to investigate potential fraud in the greater Atlanta area. But why only Atlanta? Why not Birmingham in neighboring Alabama? Why not Miami or Jacksonville in neighboring Florida? Why not Columbia, South Carolina or Charlotte, North Carolina. All of those states border Georgia. If “widespread fraud” was happening in Georgia, wouldn’t it make sense that it was happening in neighboring states as well. That is in fact what widespread means.

The senior senator from South Carolina even tried to assert that fraud had occurred in his neighboring state. Why didn’t he occupy himself by investigating the elections that had occurred in his own state?

They weren’t interested in exposing fraud. That was a convenient excuse. Their real interest was in overturning election results in states where Mr. Trump lost by a narrow margin. They didn’t even want to overturn all of the election results, just those from cities where a lot of people tend to vote for Democrats.

There was no reason overturn the results in Ohio or Alabama because Mr. Trump didn’t lose in those states. If he had lost Ohio, you can bet that Rudy Giuliani would have made several outraged speeches from Cleveland.

This deliberate attempt to overturn democracy was even more insidious, because its core strategy was to disenfranchise minority voters. The plan was to throw out votes in communities with large African American populations, and in the southwest, to do the same with the votes of Latino and Native American citizens.

Who was pushing this plan? Who was representing the plaintiffs in the courtrooms? Who was holding the press conferences? Who was going on Fox News every night to express outrage over the alleged fraud, conspiracy theories, and a host of grievances?

Well, I’ll give you a clue. None of them were Black. They were all White people. White people spread the conspiracy theories. White people gave the press conferences. White people filed the lawsuits and complained when they were thrown out.

White people ransacked the Capitol. White people marched on Charlottesville. White counter protestors instigated violence at Black Lives Matter protests. White senators prevented the last president from facing accountability in two impeachment trials, and now white people across the country are passing hundreds of laws that restrict voting access, laws that won’t have an impact on small towns, but which will cause huge delays in urban centers with high population densities.

Racism is more than crude insults, housing segregation, and discrimination in the workplace. Racism is coded into the law. Any law that makes it harder for people to vote in highly populated areas is an example of institutional racism.

We must reject and overturn racially biased laws now, every single one of them. We must reverse the racially biased laws and practices that already exist. If we as a nation to do this immediately and convincingly, we will lose our democracy forever.