By Bob Ray Sanders
bobray@ star-telegram.com
A right so fundamental as voting should never be denied nor tampered with in a representative democracy.
Yet, in the world's oldest and greatest existing democracy, that guaranteed privilege has been withheld from or manipulated for certain groups throughout our history.
At the republic's birth, many people were excluded when it came to exercising that basic right because they were considered noncitizens (slaves/property/less-than-human) or they were at best second-class citizens (females).
Even after the Civil War and the passage of the 15th Amendment that guaranteed voting rights (for males) regardless of "race, color, or previous condition of servitude," southern states were determined to devise ways to keep African-Americans from participating in the sacred ritual of casting a ballot.
Southerners came up with poll taxes and literacy tests, and, when all else failed, intimidation and outright violence became part of the process of keeping the black man in his place and away from the polling place.
For almost a hundred years such methods were practiced and accepted. I distinctly remember my parents paying poll taxes just as they, as land owners, paid other taxes that funded public facilities and services we could not use.
Under President Lyndon Johnson, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed after a long struggle for equal opportunity in the South where many were jailed, beaten and lynched simply because they demanded that America live up to its promise to
all citizens.
In recent years, when intimidation was not tolerated or simply didn't work, new tactics were devised to impede or somehow lessen the impact of minority voting.
Instead of Jim Crow laws, police dogs and fire hoses, biased politicians came up with a new weapon designed to suppress or dilute the votes of blacks and Hispanics, making it difficult to elect officeholders with their interests as a priority.
Instead of guns or ropes, all they needed was a pen or a map-drawing computer capable of splitting up minority communities and including them in a larger pool dominated by people who didn't look like them or share the same goals and aspirations.
The Texas Legislature has railroaded through a voter ID bill that will have a negative impact on poor, minority and older people. Additionally, lawmakers have produced redistricting maps that include the not-so-subtle trappings of Jim Crow.
It's no wonder that Texas and several other states with a history of discrimination are required to get preclearance from the Justice Department for any changes made in voting procedures.
Gerrymandering, always part of the redistricting process, is obvious once again in the proposed maps for Texas House and Senate seats.
In the Senate proposal released by Redistricting Committee Chairman Kel Seliger, R-Amarillo, Travis and Tarrant counties are divided among four senatorial districts designed to increase the number of Republicans.
Perhaps most egregious is what it proposes for Tarrant County's District 10, represented by Sen. Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth.
As Davis' office said last week, "African-American voters in southeast Fort Worth, Everman and Forest Hill would be completely disenfranchised in a mostly rural district in Johnson and Ellis counties to the south. Hispanic voters in north Fort Worth would be silenced by combining them with hundreds of thousands of Anglo Republican voters in Denton County."
Minority and Democratic leaders in Tarrant County are rightfully outraged.
As in years past, minority voters who can't depend on their state leaders for fairness must now put their faith in the U.S. Justice Department, which has said it is keeping an eye on Texas.
"In the modern era of redistricting," Davis' office said, "Texas has a consistent record of drawing statewide redistricting plans that have been ruled illegal by the courts. For example, in the 1970s, the legislative maps were struck down in White v. Regester; in the 1980s the congressional maps were struck down in Upham v. Seamon; in the 1990s, congressional districts were struck down in Vera v. Bush; in the post-2000 round, part of the congressional map was struck down in LULAC v. Perry."
One thing minorities know for sure: Their fight to end discriminatory voting practices continues.
Bob Ray Sanders' column appears Sundays and Wednesdays.817-390-7775
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