03 Jun 2012: Race Based Voter Suppression
This is a good discussion of voter suppression:
What I find really interesting about it is all that has to be shown is that the net effect of a law causes a minority group to be disproportionately disenfranchised. That is as it should be, of course. But drug laws disproportionately affect black and brown skinned people. And yet, the courts have found again and again that unless it can be shown that in a particular case that racial bias was the intent of the law enforcement officers involved, there is no foul.
This is relevant because the best way to disenfranchise a voter is to label him a felon. Does this suggest that there might be a way for people who want to end the drug war to make some progress in the courts? I don't know of any group working on this.
Again: read The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander.
What I find really interesting about it is all that has to be shown is that the net effect of a law causes a minority group to be disproportionately disenfranchised. That is as it should be, of course. But drug laws disproportionately affect black and brown skinned people. And yet, the courts have found again and again that unless it can be shown that in a particular case that racial bias was the intent of the law enforcement officers involved, there is no foul.
This is relevant because the best way to disenfranchise a voter is to label him a felon. Does this suggest that there might be a way for people who want to end the drug war to make some progress in the courts? I don't know of any group working on this.
Again: read The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander.
Mike B wrote:
Now, if only incarcerated (and formerly incarcerated) people, those multidimensional and nuanced human beings, whom our society values as things, who are in fact members of our community whether we realize it or not (not to mention fathers, mothers, sisters, daughters, etc. etc.) weren't so invisible... /rant
Haha, kinda lost myself there...