Politics & Current Events
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
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Voting Rights Act - SCOTUS case
Can we discuss how pathetic Scalia's remarks were? Voter suppression is still alive and well, unfortunately...
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-scalias-slam-20130228,0,4827828.story
Re: Voting Rights Act - SCOTUS case
He really is awful. He has been spouting off more than usual lately and comes off as extremely derisive. I do not like him.
me too!
While the remarks were considerably ham-handed because of how they might be taken out of context and construed, this opinion piece is just a complete hack job because it also takes out of context the events that were taking place when the comment was made.
This was a specific vote on one particular provision of the bill. It wasn't a vote to continue to let minorities vote or any other such foolishness. Per Section 5 (the one being voted on) areas with a history of racism have to have approval from the federal govt in order to make ANY changes to the way the do voting from polling places, dates, times, redistricting, etc. It is unfair in the sense that the definition of history of racial discrimination is a subjective one and does not set a time limit on how long ago that history might be. An incident like the Tawana Brawley case is enough to declare an area to be one with a history of racial discrimination and we see how reliable that was. The areas addressed in the bill are subject to the law based on information and incidents that are over 35 years old. You don't think this country has changed at all in 35 years? Also, areas that currently might be rife with discrimination have the autonomy to act on any old voting change they want to make yet areas that may have worked really hard and come a long way over the years get hog-tied by federal bureaucrats who potentially have their own agendas. Considering the way populations have changed due to both the housing boom and then the bust, the need for changes in many areas are long overdue. However, thanks to the nature politics and anything that could come back to haunt anyone involved in any changes after an election, any decision not obviously skewed in the favor of a minority could be the end of someone's federal and/or political career. This makes us not actually have a representative democracy in that you might end up with areas that end up gerrymandered in favor of a small number of minority voters or hopelessly stalemated to change because no one sees any political advantage to do it even if conventional reason and current data shows it needs to be done.
Essentially the renewal of this portion was merely a feel good thing to make people think that congress is doing something positive but it's useless in today's world. It's would be like having a vote to force public schools to allow minorities. Can you really think of an area that would seriously try to not admit minorities to a public school?
I don't think you've spent a lot of time in the South.
There are places that still have segregated proms (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/magazine/24prom-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0). Forty six percent of Mississippi Republicans think that interracial marriage should be illegal again (http://www.aolnews.com/2011/04/08/46-percent-of-mississippi-republicans-want-interracial-marriage/).
So yes, I can absolutely see some areas that would try to refuse to admit minorities into public schools.
I think your viewpoint that "today's world" is so different and racism is no longer such a big problem is terribly naive.