“AMENDMENT XV
Passed by Congress February 26, 1869. Ratified February 3, 1870.
Section 1.
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude–
Section 2.
The Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”
The mariner has read and reread Amendment XV to the Constitution. He does not understand how the Supreme Court arrived at its decision to strike down the core issue of the Voting Rights Act that President Johnson signed in 1965. The Chief Justice claimed the 1972 data was out of date. The Voting Rights Act was renewed by Congress in 2006.
The Chief Justice used census data to show that more blacks than whites voted in the areas covered by the Act and for that reason, the Act had done its job and was no longer needed.
That statistic will not last long.
Racial discrimination still is rampant in the Southern part of the United States. Justice Roberts should have looked at district gerrymandering as a clue. Alabama districts have introduced a new redistricting bill that reduces the number of districts for both black and Hispanic voters.
The United States will have to wait another generation before the whites are outnumbered enough to thwart gerrymandering tactics, particularly by the Hispanics. When immigration legislation makes its way through Congress, more nonvoting Hispanics will become eligible to vote.
The mariner has been to Georgia and Alabama during his days as a consultant. The discrimination is vile and mean. There is no love lost between the races.
White supremacists still run the United States. Not just in the south regarding non-whites but also against the poor and political parties. One person, one vote does not exist in reality. Besides gerrymandering, zoning commissions plan projects that will benefit corporations at the cost of less influential neighborhoods.
Capitalist economics works for the haves at the cost of the have-nots. Where are the statesmen not swayed by money or power? It is no accident that Federal elections have been rigged so only rich people can run for office.
Our governments, all of them, are so broken……
Ancient Mariner