Jim Crow is back

Lawrence Alfred Powell, Contributor

TWO DISTURBING legal developments in the United States (US) over the last month suggest that the hard-won civil rights gains of the Martin Luther King era are in the process of being dismantled. The recent Supreme Court decision striking down a key provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and the acquittal of George Zimmerman for the shooting death of teenager Trayvon Martin, have a familiar déjà vu quality. Institutionalised racism and judicial double standards, in the form of Jim Crow-like laws, seem to be returning with a vengeance.

In the post-Reconstruction period, after 1890, particularly in the Southern states, a pervasive 'Jim Crow' system of second-class citizenship and disenfranchisement was used to undermine the citizenship rights that emancipation had granted to African Americans. This system of legal, economic and social discrimination, combined voter suppression (literacy tests, poll taxes and other hurdles), with racial segregation (legitimised by the Supreme Court in Plessy vs. Ferguson), and constant threats of racial violence against non-compliants (which went unpunished and were openly encouraged by law enforcement).

Responding to this American-style apartheid, the Civil Rights Movement struggles and court decisions of the 1950s and 1960s removed some of the most egregious barriers to legal and political equality. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 banned racial discrimination in public accommodations and employment practices. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 restored and protected suffrage rights, ending the use of so-called literacy tests, poll taxes and other voter registration filters. As a result, African American voter registration more than doubled throughout the South over the next four years after passage of the Act, and remains high to this day.

OBSOLETE SECTION 4?

The current 2013 Shelby County vs. Holder ruling, by a Supreme Court stacked with Bush-era appointees, strikes down Section 4, the central pillar of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that was put in place to prevent historically racist states from constructing obstacles to voting. As such, it's a harsh blow to the suffrage rights of minorities and immigrants in the United States, which essentially resets the clock back to the pre-1965 era, intentionally recreating the legal basis for states to again develop Jim Crow-like discriminatory practices.

The now-invalidated Section 4 had elaborated rules to be followed by Congress in identifying regions of the US that would be subject to scrutiny if local or state lawmakers tried to alter election rules, or prevent African-Americans from running for public office. However, Chief Justice Roberts, in justifying the Shelby County vs. Holder decision, claims that "things have changed dramatically" since 1965. Paradoxically, the Court's majority has ruled that since the Voting Rights Act succeeded in increasing black-voter turnout and officeholding over the last half century, it is now no longer necessary and should, therefore, be scrapped. The historical success of the Voting Rights Act is thus being used as an excuse to invalidate its key provision.

FOX News and Rush Limbaugh have been in continuous celebration over this demise of 'outdated' civil rights principles. And Republican governors and state legislators wasted no time, scampering to their state houses to pass new voting restrictions with glee.

The same day the ruling was announced, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said his state would "immediately" begin implementing legislation that effectively makes minority voting more difficult. "With today's decision, the state's voter-ID law will take effect immediately. Photo identification will now be required when voting in elections in Texas. Redistricting maps passed by the Legislature may also take effect without approval from the federal government."

Governor Rick Perry also chimed in, declaring the decision "a clear victory for ... the states," and boasting that Texas "may now implement the will of the people without being subject to outdated and unnecessary oversight and the overreach of federal power".

In 1955, a 14-year-old teenager, Emmett Till, was visiting his family in Mississippi when he was beaten and shot for allegedly whistling at a white woman. Two white men were later arrested for his murder, then acquitted by a 'southern-style' jury. Because it symbolised the double standards embedded in the American system of justice - with which African-Americans had to contend on a daily basis - the case helped catalyse the civil-rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

As Nicole Austin-Hillery, of the Brennan Center
for Justice at New York University School of Law, pointed out, the
recent shooting death of 17-year-old Martin contains disturbing echoes
of Emmett Till and the pre-civil rights era: "Many black parents will
try to explain to their children, especially their sons, what to make of
the (Zimmerman) verdict ... . How is it possible that a black child,
walking where he had a right to walk, doing absolutely nothing wrong,
could be pursued, confronted and, ultimately, shot dead by a
neighbourhood-watch volunteer - and the killer escape
punishment?"

These recent civil-rights reversals
suggest that Republicans and Tea Party supporters are manoeuvring to
"take America back". They seem especially threatened by the presence of
an African-American president. The mean-spiritedness of Jim Crow is
creeping back into American social life, if it ever really left. Emmett
Till, Medgar Evers, Rosa Parks, Thurgood Marshall, Martin Luther King,
Malcolm X, and Marcus Garvey must surely be turning in their
graves.

Lawrence Alfred Powell is honorary research
fellow at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, and a former senior
lecturer at UWI, Mona. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and
lapowell.auckland@ymail.com.