Showing posts with label Disenfranchising Blacks in politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Disenfranchising Blacks in politics. Show all posts

Monday

How Alabama is defying the supreme court to discriminate against Black voters

CC™ Politico

By Sam Levine & Andrew Witherspoon

“In June, the US supreme court upheld a decision ordering Alabama to redraw its congressional map – but state Republicans ignored the mandate”

Just a few months ago, the US supreme court issued one of its most surprising rulings in recent memory.

In a 5-4 decision in Allen v Milligan, the court said Alabama’s congressional mapviolated the 1965 Voting Rights Act because it diluted the influence of Black voters, who make up about a quarter of the state’s population, but comprise a majority in just one of Alabama’s congressional districts. The justices upheld a lower court’s decision ordering Alabama to redraw its map “to include two districts in which Black voters either comprise a voting-age majority or something quite close to it”.

It was widely seen as a major win for the Voting Rights Act, a statute that the US supreme court has significantly hollowed out over the last decade. It was a victory that was supposed to give the Black belt, a historically Black region in the state that is among the poorest in the US, better representation in Washington.

The statute, a landmark of the civil rights movement, has been critical in increasing Black representation at all levels of government across the US.

But when Alabama’s Republican-controlled legislature convened just a few weeks later, they ignored the mandate. Their new map still included just one majority Black district. It increased the percentage of Black voters in a second district to be around 41% Black, but continued to crack the Black belt, a historically Black region that stretches across the middle of Alabama, into multiple districts. Now, it is asking a federal court to approve that map and, if they don’t, the case will probably return to the supreme court.


SOURCE: GUARDIAN