The Degradation Of Liberal Rhetoric

No, I’m not referring to Cindy Sheehan’s calling President Bush the world’s greatest terrorist, but rather to the charge that this or that proposal in the racial arena — often, oddly, the call for colorblind equal treatment — would result, as an OpEd in today’s Washington Post puts it, in “Reviving Jim Crow.” (I do not regard the question mark that follows the title to be a large enough fig leaf to cover the underlying charge.)

The author, David Becker, identified as “a voting rights attorney and election consultant,” begins his Chicken Little (“The sky is falling!” for those of you who don’t recall) with the following sentence:

Any day now the Justice Department will render judgment on one of the single most discriminatory pieces of voting legislation of recent years: a Georgia state law requiring voters to present one of only six forms of photo identification before they can exercise their right to vote.

How many “single most discriminatory pieces of voting legislation” can there be? Oh well. Never mind.

Becker’s complaint is that a new law that would require Georgia voters to present an official photo ID would have a disparate impact on black voters, leading inexorably to the revival of Jim Crow.

Requiring this sort of ID for voting may or may not be a good idea (I think it is), but it demeans the evil of Jim Crow — not to mention the mental balance of those making the accusation — to portray the “disparate impact” or a photo ID requirement, even if real, as its equivalent.

John Fund has some similar criticism of this nonsense on OpinionJournal today.

Say What? (11)

  1. El Blogero August 22, 2005 at 4:32 pm | | Reply

    This is just the latest example of the running gag on liberal headlines: “World to End Tomorrow; Women and Minorities Hardest Hit.”

    Even if the premise that minorities, and blacks specifically, are unlikely to have photo id (oh, and congrats to the left for giving life to a new stereotype

  2. Dom August 22, 2005 at 4:35 pm | | Reply

    You didn’t mention some choice quotes:

    This from Juan Williams: “[The opposition to a photo-di] 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.”

    This from Andrew Young: “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.

    Also from Young: “I accept the recounts that show George Bush won”

    Dom

  3. fenster August 22, 2005 at 4:44 pm | | Reply

    John:

    You’re the lawyer, but I’d think to make a disparate impact argument you’d have to say more than fewer minorities have photo IDs on driver’s licenses. I’d think you’d have to demonstrate why it would be systematically more difficult to get them.

    Becker is right about one thing, though. *Someone* is reviving Jim Crow.

  4. Michelle Dulak Thomson August 22, 2005 at 5:00 pm | | Reply

    That is quite a piece there.

    Personally, I’m impressed that Georgia requires any ID at all, given that the last two times I voted in CA I wasn’t asked for any proof of identity whatsoever.

    From the article:

    Additionally, it is surprisingly difficult to obtain a photo ID in Georgia. Though the state has 159 counties, there are only 56 places in which residents can obtain a driver’s license, and not one is within the city limits of Atlanta or within the six counties that have the highest percentage of blacks.

    Mr. Becker has left out the most damning part here, which is that even if a resident of one of these counties makes it past the county line to one of the 56 places, s/he will then be required to perform some degrading nonsense called a “driving test” before receiving his/her photo ID.

    [/sarcasm]

    Seriously, there can be very few adults in Georgia or any other state who lack photo ID because they’re physically unable to get it. If Mr. Becker undertook to prove that there are people in Atlanta or in the six counties he mentions who cannot drive because there is no DMV office in their county and hence they can’t get licenses, I’d certainly pay attention, but I don’t think he would succeed.

    There is also considerable evidence that photo ID requirements have a disproportionately negative impact on blacks and other minorities. The Justice Department found as recently as a decade ago that blacks in Louisiana were four to five times less likely than whites to have photo IDs.

    Now, that is obviously wrong, and I wonder that it got past the WaPo editors. Assume for a moment that all white Louisianans have photo IDs. The statement means that only a quarter, at most, of black Louisianans do. That is absurd, and it gets more absurd if you allow that there might be some white Louisianans without photo ID.

    What the JD must have said is that whites were four to five times less likely than blacks not to have photo ID, which means something completely different.

  5. Richard Nieporent August 22, 2005 at 5:29 pm | | Reply

    Additionally, it is surprisingly difficult to obtain a photo ID in Georgia. Though the state has 159 counties, there are only 56 places in which residents can obtain a driver’s license, and not one is within the city limits of Atlanta or within the six counties that have the highest percentage of blacks.

    So how do people get to drive in Georgia if there are so few places to obtain a driver’s license?

  6. Cobra August 22, 2005 at 11:24 pm | | Reply

    Two consecutive paragraphs from the article in question don’t surprise me in the least.

    >>>”The law’s proponents claim that it will help protect against voter fraud, but there appears to be no evidence to support this claim. Georgians already have to show one of 17 forms of ID to prove that they are who they say they are when they vote. Georgia’s chief elections official, Secretary of State Cathy Cox, has said that not one instance of voter fraud relating to impersonation at the polls has been documented during her tenure.

    Furthermore, while purporting to combat fraud, the Georgia law expressly excludes absentee ballots from the ID requirement. While all the evidence indicates that minorities are far less likely to vote absentee than whites, absentee balloting is the only form of voting in which there is documented fraud in Georgia. The exclusion of absentee ballots from the identification requirement raises serious questions about whether the anti-fraud justification for the law is purely pretextual.”

    That previous posters didn’t pick up on this is quite interesting…and also not surprising in the least. OBVIOUSLY the motivation of this scheme isn’t preventing voter fraud, because the facts won’t pack any luggage for that trip.

    It’s just another disheartening example of why conscious minorities must be ever vigilant and on guard for these types of shenanigans.

    P.S. John, do you believe the Bush ordered strategy of “Shock and Awe” terrorized Iraqi civilians, especially when quarter ton bombs struck malls and shopping areas?

    –Cobra

  7. john August 23, 2005 at 1:08 am | | Reply

    Only SIX forms of acceptable ID? Wow!

    (I thought Dems were concerend with voter fraud. Guess not.)

  8. Nels Nelson August 23, 2005 at 1:19 am | | Reply

    Cobra, the law actually goes beyond what you said: it mind-bogglingly encourages more absentee voting fraud, by (1) striking the requirement that a valid reason be given for requesting an absentee ballot; (2) allowing absentee ballot applications to be distributed with partisan campaign literature; (3) no longer requiring that an absentee voter state his place of birth; and (4) reducing the period of time within which the legitimacy of prospective absentee voters may be challenged.

  9. Cobra August 23, 2005 at 6:12 pm | | Reply

    Nels,

    It’s unbelievable. I think this is another great example of “team politics” in effect.

    “Hey, if the people whom I disagree with don’t like something about a law, it must be a GOOD thing, so I’ll support it!”

    –Cobra

  10. Anita August 24, 2005 at 9:54 am | | Reply

    Cobra, regarding terrorizing citizens in Iraq, I remember pictures of people eating lunch at cafes and strolling about when the bombs were going off. They were not the least afraid of Americans. Of course, terrible things happen in war. That’s why its war. But I don’t think that America had a pollicy to terrorize Iraqis. You could almost say that’s a problem with the occupation. Occupied peoples are usually too scared to go around being “insurgents”. These people are not scared of the US. They don’t think that if they kill one US soldier, that the US will retaliate by wiping out a whole school, etc. To the extent that an occupation can be humane, this is humane.

  11. Cobra August 24, 2005 at 11:16 pm | | Reply

    Anita writes:

    >>>Cobra, regarding terrorizing citizens in Iraq, I remember pictures of people eating lunch at cafes and strolling about when the bombs were going off. They were not the least afraid of Americans. Of course, terrible things happen in war.”

    Not hijacking the thread any further, but the Iraqis who were killed, injured and maimed (or had friends and family) during “Shock and Awe” might have a slightly different opinion than you. I would agree with you that many Iraqis are familiar with bombs, based on the the fact it’s been involved in wars for the past few decades.

    An occupation, whether “humane” as you call it, or not, is still an occupation, and Iraqis don’t sit well with that anymore than Americans would.

    –Cobra

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