Supreme Court Justices Will Hear Challenge to Voting Rights Act, Brought by Former Clarence Thomas Clerk, Gregory S. Coleman

Every black voter in the United States must pay attention to the latest case brought before the United States Supreme Court. The court has agreed to examine whether a central component of landmark civil rights legislation enacted to protect minority voters is still needed in a nation that has elected an African American president. I fully expected that this would pop up again.

The court will decide the constitutionality of a provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that seeks to protect minority voting rights by requiring a broad set of states and jurisdictions where discrimination was once routine to receive federal approval before altering any of their voting procedures. Funny, wasn’t there evidence of discrimination in the last general election? There were cases across the United States and in predominantly black areas–fewer voting booths, rigid polling hours, less staff and so on.

The Supreme Court has upheld the requirement in the past, saying the intrusion on state sovereignty is warranted to protect voting rights and eliminate discrimination against minorities. But challengers say it ignores the reality of modern America and “consigns broad swaths of the nation to apparently perpetual federal receivership based on 40-year-old evidence.”

The outcome will be very interesting because the court, led by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., has become increasingly skeptical of race-based remedies. With Uncle Clarence Thomas on the bench, only too happy to get rid of any provisions to protect blacks, I can only imagine what the outcome is going to be.

The Voting Rights Act was enacted in 1965, at a time when literacy tests and other schemes were routinely used, especially in parts of the deep South, to intimidate and exclude black voters. Its Section 5 “pre-clearance” requirements, which compel the Justice Department or a court to sign off on any changes to voting procedures, were intended to last for five years. Instead, the law was expanded to include other minorities, and its duration was extended four times, most recently in 2006 by overwhelming congressional majorities.

The pre-clearance requirements apply to nine states — Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia — as well as counties and towns in seven others. Fifteen jurisdictions in Virginia, including the city of Fairfax, have been allowed to “bail out” of the requirement with the agreement of the federal government.

Challengers say the Section 5 designations are an outrageous “badge of shame” on jurisdictions that have never discriminated, at a time when minorities have been elected to public office in record numbers.

“The America that has elected Barack Obama as its first African-American president is far different than when Section 5 was first enacted in 1965,” wrote Gregory S. Coleman, a former Texas solicitor general who brought the suit on behalf of a tiny utilities district in Austin that is covered by the law.

The district was created in the late 1980s to provide sewer services to a new subdivision, and there has never been a charge of discrimination in the way the now-3,500 residents elect their five-member board of directors. But any changes the district makes — such as moving its elections from a resident’s home to a local school — require Justice Department approval.

Coleman, a politically active lawyer who once clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas, testified to Congress in opposition to extending the Voting Rights Act in 2006. He recruited Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 for a test case after Congress extended the law for another 25 years. Source: Washington Post

Why am I not surprised that someone associated with Clarence Thomas brought this suit? Clarence Thomas acts as though racism was never a problem of untold proportions in the United States. He acts as though he coasted through college because of his educational merits, rather than with the assistance of Affirmative Action. Clarence Thomas and Gregory S. Coleman are real Uncle Toms in every sense of the word. So, because Barack Obama will become the first African American president of the USA, that means we should discard all protections in place for blacks in America, in terms of suffrage rights? There has been more display of racism towards Barack Obama from the moment he declared his intentions to run for the presidency. He was the first to receive Secret Service protection. So the notion that the playing field has been leveled is furthest from the truth and actually insulting on so many level.

Filed under: Barack Obama, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., Clarence Thomas, Discrimination, Gregory S. Coleman, of 1965, US Supreme Court, Voting Rights Act

Bob Jones University Apologizes For Racist Policies that Persisted Well into the Early 2000s

This rings very hollow to me, but nonetheless, I applaud Bob Jones University’s President Stephen Jones’ decision to do so. The fundamentalist Christian University apologized for racist policies including a one-time ban on interracial dating, which was not lifted until nine years ago and let’s also not forget the institution’s unwillingness to admit black students until 1971. Mr. Jones said that the decision to apologize was also based, in part, on the questions the school continues to receive on its views on race.

Bob Jones University, which was founded in 1927 in South Carolina, said its rules on race were shaped by culture instead of the Bible. The university did not begin admitting black students until nearly 20 years after the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling found public segregated schools were unconstitutional. I personally would not consider Bob Jones University as an institution of higher learning for my own children. You see, old habits dies hard. According to a historical snapshot of the school, From 1971 to 1975, BJU admitted only married blacks, although the IRS had already determined in 1970 that “private schools with racially discriminatory admissions policies” were not entitled to federal tax exemption. Late in 1971, BJU filed suit to prevent the IRS from taking its tax exemption, but in 1974, in Bob Jones University v. Simon, the US Supreme Court ruled that the University did not have standing to sue until the IRS actually assessed taxes. Four months later, on May 29, 1975, the University Board of Trustees authorized a change in policy to admit “students of any race,” a move that occurred shortly before the announcement of the Supreme Court decision in Runyon v. McCrary, which prohibited racial exclusion in private schools. To read more on BJU racist past, CLICK HERE.

The university issued a formal apology on their website that reads…..

“We failed to accurately represent the Lord and to fulfill the commandment to love others as ourselves. For these failures we are profoundly sorry. Though no known antagonism toward minorities or expressions of racism on a personal level have ever been tolerated on our campus, we allowed institutional policies to remain in place that were racially hurtful,” the statement said. The interracial dating ban was lifted in March 2000, not long after the policy became an issue in the Republican presidential primary. Then-candidate George W. Bush was criticized when he spoke at the school during one of his first campaign stops.

Let me echo the sentiments of Lonnie Randolph, the leader of the South Carolina National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, who said:

“It’s unfortunate it took them this long — particularly a religious, faith-based institution — to realize that we all are human beings and the rights of all people should be respected and honored.”

I completely agree with his statements. I would also caution others not to hold Mr. Jones liable for the decisions made by Bob Jones, his grandfather and his father, also named Bob Jones, against him. I have to wonder, what took Mr. Jones so long to speak out against the policies of the school. A dwindling student population, that lacks diversity, perhaps?

Filed under: Bob Jones University, Lonnie Rudolph, President George W. Bush, Racial Discrimination, Stephen Jones, US Supreme Court