Jim Crow
Jim Crow
For many, that name will mean nothing , so let me give you a little history lesson:
The term Jim Crow comes from the minstrel show song "Jump Jim Crow" written in 1828 by Thomas D. Rice, a white English migrant to the U.S., the originator of blackface performance. The song and blackface itself were an immediate hit. "Jim Crow" became a standard character in Minstrel shows, being a caricature of a shabbily dressed rural black; "Jim Crow" was often paired with the character "Zip Coon", a flamboyantly dressed urban black who associated more into white culture. By 1837, Jim Crow was being used to refer to racial segregation.
The term then was used to describe what was called Jim Crow Laws:
In the United States, the so-called Jim Crow laws were made to enforce racial segregation, and included laws that would prevent African Americans from doing things that a white person could do. For instance, Jim Crow laws regulated separate use of water fountains and separate seating sections on public transport. Jim Crow laws varied among communities and states. The term is not applied to all racist laws, but only to those passed post-Reconstruction starting in about 1890, the start of a period of worsening race relations in the United States. Similar laws passed immediately after the civil war were called the Black Codes.
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There is no doubt that horrible things have been done to African-Americans in our country. But at the same time, when people today resurrect the crimes of the past to try and say things today are just like they were then, you have to shake your head in disbelief. When a person uses such faulty logic, it hurts their argument.
Consider the following artice which was posted at:
Resurrecting Jim Crow for Political Gain Voter fraud is also a threat to minority voters.
Monday, August 22, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT
The Voting Rights Act, whose 40th anniversary we celebrate this month, has helped minorities elect 81 sitting members of Congress and thousands of local officials. But the rally civil rights groups held in Atlanta earlier this month to push for extension of the act's key temporary provisions downplayed those gains and instead pushed wild claims that some state laws requiring an ID to vote are the functional equivalent of Jim Crow poll taxes.
Both Judge Greg Mathis, the star of a syndicated courtroom TV show, and California Rep. Barbara Lee claimed that the last two presidential elections had been "stolen." Judge Mathis told the rally Republican leaders "need to be locked up because they're all criminals and thieves." Other speakers claimed Georgia's new photo ID law would suppress poor and elderly minority voters who might lack such a document. When the bill passed the Georgia House in March, black legislators sang slave songs and one even slammed a prisoner's shackles on the desk of the sponsor.
Juan Williams, a National Public Radio correspondent and author of "Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years," is "stunned" by such vituperation. He told Fox News that it is "reacting to devils that have been slain 40 years ago." He says that "in service to having no fraud elections, I think you could say to people, go and get a legitimate ID. I don't think that's too much to ask."
Andrew Young, the former Atlanta mayor and U.N. ambassador who spoke at the rally, believes that in an era when people have to show ID to rent a video or cash a check "requiring ID can help poor people." He noted that Georgia is deploying a mobile bus to issue voter IDs and allowing groups like the NAACP to arrange for it to go to specific sites.
Mr. Young says rehashing arguments about the 2000 and 2004 elections doesn't solve much--"I accept the recounts that show George Bush won"--and says it's time for fresh thinking. "[Let's] ask what we do about low voter turnout and whether it's the result of racial discrimination or not," he told me. "I don't think it is, since everyone is equally inconvenienced by how we vote." He suggests moving Election Day to a weekend and expanding the hours polls are open.
But many liberals can't be bothered with a positive agenda. A new 300-page report by the American Center for Voting Rights, a group with Republican ties, documents both examples of voter fraud as well as the flimsy nature of many charges of voter suppression. David Porter, the deputy editorial page editor of the Orlando Sentinel and an African American, says he was "bewildered" last year by reports of voter intimidation in his city that didn't pan out. John Kerry routinely accused Republicans in the 2000 election of "disenfranchising a million African Americans and stealing their votes" but provided no evidence. In that vein, a Kerry election manual advised workers that if they hadn't seen signs of intimidation they should "launch a 'pre-emptive strike'" and cry wolf anyway.
Such cynicism exasperates some Democrats. Last year, Joe Andrew, who served as Bill Clinton's chairman of the Democratic National Committee, blasted conspiracy theories that electronic voting machines, or DREs, would be used to steal votes and said "most liberals are just plain old-fashioned nuts" on the subject. He lamented that prominent Democrats "are rallying behind the anti-DRE bandwagon in a big election year because they think that this movement is good for Democrats."
Nor has the truth stretching stopped with the election. Barbara Arnwine of The Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights claims photo ID laws "could disenfranchise 10% of the electorate." In June, DNC Chairman Howard Dean issued a report on last year's election in Ohio. He claimed it backed up charges of widespread "voter suppression." But after a scholar involved in writing the report told journalists that wasn't so, Mr. Dean had to return to the microphones to revise his remarks: "While we certainly couldn't draw a proven conclusion that this was willful, it certainly has the appearance of impropriety."
But William Anthony, Democratic chairman in Ohio's capital of Columbus, scoffs at such suggestions. Mr. Anthony, who is also chair of the county elections board, said the high turnout and a ballot that involved more than 100 choices for some voters did create lines, but told the Columbus Dispatch he was offended by "a band of conspiracy theorists" alleging suppression. "I am a black man. Why would I sit there and disenfranchise voters in my own community?"
This isn't to say dirty tricks aren't pulled to lower minority turnout. Mr. Dean has pointed to anonymous flyers that publicized Election Day as being on a Wednesday or informed voters they had to clear up parking tickets to vote. But the only documented case of serious deception involving more than fliers was committed by the Kerry campaign. On Election Day, a Marion, Ohio, judge enjoined Democrats from calling GOP voters and giving them incorrect polling locations while claiming they had to bring four separate forms of ID to vote.
Cathy Chaffin, the county Democratic chair, has signed an affidavit on the incident that reads like a plea from a hostage. In late October, she learned that Kerry workers who had taken over her office space were making the calls and ordered them to stop. Days later she learned the calls were still being made and repeated her command. On the morning of Election Day she learned "the activity had not in fact stopped" and told Kerry staffer Jim Secreto "he could not operate out of the headquarters if he continued to violate my directive."
The Voting Rights Act ensures the right to vote for all Americans. But as Attorney General Alberto Gonzales says it's "just as important to preserve the value of that vote from those who would corrupt the election process." His office is currently pursuing 120 election fraud investigations and since early 2003 has charged 89 people with fraud.
Those cases don't get as much play as the conspiracy theories, but they have the advantage of having facts behind them. It's time media outlets that analyze the accuracy of campaign ads vigorously apply the same truth detector to all charges of election chicanery.
Mr. Fund, a regular contributor to OpinionJournal's Political Diary, is the author of "Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy (Encounter Books, 2004).
