[Gardener]

I guess @Julian658 does not the laws.

@Gardener, are you also unaware of these laws?

Yes: I am unaware of any US laws that are intended to disenfranchise black people ! Such laws would - themselves - be illegal; a precedent that I believe has been established by the Supreme Court ?

[Pants-of-dog]

Yes: I am unaware of any US laws that are intended to disenfranchise black people ! Such laws would - themselves - be illegal; a precedent that I believe has been established by the Supreme Court ?

Google “felony disenfranchisement”.

Let me know what you find!

[Wellsy]

Yes: I am unaware of any US laws that are intended to disenfranchise black people ! Such laws would - themselves - be illegal; a precedent that I believe has been established by the Supreme Court ?

Indeed, laws are not explicitly discriminatory but in their abstractness can be so in their content/practice.
This point isn't lost on politicians for quite some time now.
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/exclusive-lee-atwaters-infamous-1981-interview-southern-strategy/

The late, legendarily brutal campaign consultant Lee Atwater explains how Republicans can win the vote of racists without sounding racist themselves:

You start out in 1954 by saying, “N*****, N*****, N*****.” By 1968 you can’t say “N*****”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “N*****, N*****.”

"In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread." - Anatole France

So any discussion of such has to dig a little deeper than the abstract equality of law because it in practice doesn't mean everyone is treated the same. Currently there is a tension over how states like Georgia are reforming laws on voting which are seen in content as undermining the ability of blacks to vote after their huge turn out which basically won Biden the presidential election. The rhetoric avoids any sense of race, but it is seen as targeting in such a way. Where one has to even question why there is often such extreme effort to undermine the ability to vote in a country that prides itself in the rhetoric of democracy and freedom.

The history of the USA is horrible with respect to slavery and what followed. The approach of black leaders has been to keep the history fresh and alive at all times. It has become a pseudo-religion to remember slavery in a manner similar as to how Christians celebrate and remember the crucifixion of Jesus. The destruction of all monuments is a bit contradictory in this context.

I understand that people are offended by the statues. However, in a strange sense this is good. In the old days things were so terrible for black people that they did not have time to worry about statues. Now that things are better the statues have become intolerable.

OK, lets destroyed all statues and monuments including those to Thomas Jefferson and George Washington. What happens next? Does that solve the problems of disenfranchised black Americans?

I always see massive contradictions in the new non-racist movement. And the contradictions can only be explained in the context of religion.

And what current black leaders are keeping slavery fresh in peoples minds? As it seems it is only a talking point in making the connection to the present conditions but often the focus of politics is on present issues, it is just also the case that our history both individually and as a society are not independent of history.
One doesn't need to talk about slavery to necessarily raise concerns over policing in the last couple of decades.
At the same time though, a short term focus also makes it impossible to answer, why are things like they are now?

I see your point in stating that there might be better alternatives of political aims but I think we should first establish what is the importance or significance of the statues in the first place.
It's not an economic change but I don't think it is necessarily insignificant either and hence ht political tension around it. If it was a non-issue, then they could be changed or not with relative ease but that isn't the case so it reflects a tension in the US.

And I also would emphasize that iconclasm isn't some unique thing to the US but is a common struggle historically where the resistance to such change of symbols is that they're treated as somehow sacred and holy to a particular view. Again, we see the issue over the sort of figures and values that are valorized.
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/06/statues-removal-antiracism-columbus

it’s well-known that revolutions possess an “iconoclastic fury.” Whether it is spontaneous, like the destruction of churches, crosses, and Catholic relics during the first months of the Spanish Civil War, or more carefully planned, like the demolition of the Vendôme Column during the Paris Commune, this outburst of iconoclasm shapes any overthrow of the established order.

Film director Sergei Eisenstein opened October, his masterpiece on the Russian Revolution, with images of the crowd toppling a statue of Tsar Alexander III, and in 1956 the Budapest insurgents destroyed the statue of Stalin. In 2003 — as an unwillingly ironical confirmation of this historical rule — US troops staged the fall of a Saddam Hussein statue in Baghdad, with the complicity of many embedded television stations, in the attempt to disguise their occupation as a popular uprising.

Unlike in that case, wherever protest movements’ iconoclasm is authentic, it unfailingly arouses indignant reactions. The Communards were depicted as “vandals” and Gustave Courbet, one of those responsible for bringing down the column, thrown in jail. As for the Spanish anarchists, they were condemned as ferocious barbarians.
...
We know that our architectural and artistic patrimony is burdened with the legacy of oppression. As a famous aphorism from Walter Benjamin put it, “There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.” Those who topple statues are not blind nihilists: they don’t wish to destroy the Colosseum or the pyramids.
...
The “new censors” share the assessment of Frantz Fanon, who analyzed this cliché in his 1952 book Black Skin White Masks: “The black man contented himself with thanking the white man, and the most forceful proof of the fact is the impressive number of statues erected all over France and the colonies to show white France stroking the kinky hair of this nice Negro whose chains had just been broken.”

Working through the past is not an abstract task or a purely intellectual exercise. Rather, it requires a collective effort and cannot be dissociated from political action. This is the meaning of the iconoclasm of recent days. Indeed, while it has erupted within a global anti-racist mobilization, the ground had already been prepared by years of counter-memorial commitment and historical investigation advanced by a multitude of associations and activists.

Like all collective action, iconoclasm deserves attention and constructive criticism. To contemptuously stigmatize it is merely to provide apologias for a history of oppression.

Also consider that such confederate statues themselves were raised during the struggles of civil rights, they being a reaction against black struggles. A struggle necessarily has more than one side struggling, there is the reaction that is built up and pressed to act and we must act what motivates each side. Some of the common defenses against changing or removing statues seem to be purposely vague as not to explicitly state the sort of ideas which motivate their defense.

You don't state what contradictions you see explicitly, and I think one also has to be more specific to identify the individual or social subject of such contradictions otherwise one is arbitrarily tying things together under a label which may or may not hold in reality. For example if I posed that the civil rights movement was one of contradictions because I compare those who followed MLK Jr with Malcolm X in their principles, they would in a sense be correct that they have very different means to the same end, but within the movements themselves, they need not be so directly inconsistent.
There can be contradictions between a leader and their followers even where a leader pushes back against spontaneous actions of followers who thought themselves acting in the spirit of the movemnt.
But without identifying the actual subjects, one ends up with vague condemnations of liberals, leftists, conservatives or whatever which just becomes a vague umbrella term to shove all sorts of shit under without any meaningful connection. I can create castles in the sky in such a fashion.

In general, I think we should discuss what is the value of certain figures who are represented in public spaces, who have buildings named after them? Why valorize them? Back in Australia, I lived in a city that had a statue of King George, and what shit does an average Australian care for King George, what greatness does he represent to any republican who detests the Constitutional monarchy that Australia formally is.
Even in Melbourne on old buildings see the attribution to a wealthy individual as responsible for its construction but of course the wealthy do not labor on such things, there is no plaque for the name of workers who did it.
This isn't a point against any representative of a people or public figure but it's not incontentious to say that a lot of those who are praised are not well regarded in the present and that people may decide to remove them as symbols to valorize as they don't wish for them to be celebrated. Just as someone who is anti-communist does not wish to celebrate certain figures like Lenin, Marx or who ever and would change things so as to remove their celebration as part of the country.

I am also a bit skeptical of many associations with religion in its dogmatic sense because I don't think this is something confined to religion which serves only in the modernist attack on religion in the past but has since become a staple in representing the connotations of being antiquated, dogmatic, irrational and so on.
It relies on negative connotations for a rhetorical point, in the same way one may rhetorically present one's opponents as effemininate. This is why McWhorter after making the comparison to religious scripture with the idea of America being based on racism is not that it is indefensible, as much as he is attacking the idea that raising questions leads to a knee jerk reaction of condemnation rather than thinking through things. The whole liberal ideal, on the other hand, one can take advantage of the idiot liberal who fully subscribes to such ideas of simply talking things out where we see JAQing off, just asking questions. Some are definitely dismissive in engaging someone who they disagree with and its all very emotional, but at the same time, there are definitely people framed as neutral who are playing things subtlety also.
This is where Zizek would argue that the liberal who argues pure facts with a holocaust denier is an idiot because many of the facts will indeed be true but the real false thing is the belief which motivates their fixation on those facts which are seen as false.
This is where we necessarily infer the sort of motivations behind a person's actions like if someone seems fixated on the crime committed by black Americans, it raises questions.
If I denied any sympathy and interest in Marxism for example, it would come off as insincere as I clearly defend many things associated with it and use material from Marxist figures.
It's where our actions build a pattern which speaks to something beyond our words in that moment.

[Gardener]

The history of the USA is horrible with respect to slavery and what followed.

The history of the USA was the same as the History of the entire western world in regard to slavery. Note two things:
1) The slaves where generally bought from Africans, who did the work of capturing and enslaving them. It was an accepted part of their society.
2) America (specifically Virginia) was one of - if not THE - first to abolish the slave trade. (followed by the UK). All the rest of the planet carried on with it (especially the Africans and Arabs). Indeed, slavery was not abolished in the Muslim world until the 1950's. Even though the practice was abolished by Muslim nations, individual Immams have argued that it is sanctioned in the Koran, and is therefore a part of mainstream Islam.

So in that context, America has nothing to be ashamed of. (or if it has, other countries - especially East African countries - have a great deal MORE to be ashamed of).

[Gardener]

Indeed, laws are not explicitly discriminatory but in their abstractness can be so in their content/practice.
This point isn't lost on politicians for quite some time now.
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/exclusive-lee-atwaters-infamous-1981-interview-southern-strategy/


"In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread." - Anatole France

The article in The Nation was talking about a 1981 interview, which - in turn - was discussing attitudes decades earlier. Regardless, it does NOT talk about any law that disenfranchises blacks. I would suggest that this simply doesn't happen in the modern day, and hasn't done for about 60 years.

[Wellsy]

The article in The Nation was talking about a 1981 interview, which - in turn - was discussing attitudes decades earlier. Regardless, it does NOT talk about any law that disenfranchises blacks. I would suggest that this simply doesn't happen in the modern day, and hasn't done for about 60 years.

Yeah its age is apart of my point that the idea that you can implement laws under a racist intent if your frame it abstract enough is well known and has been for sometime now.
It relates itself to the explicitness of racism in 1954, yes, but just because folks aren’t using racial slurs doesn’t mean they don’t have racist notions and motivations.

Indeed the example doesn’t cite a specific example which is why I brought up the recent debates over making it more difficult for blacks to vote through various strategies under the pretense of voter fraud and such.
The big reform of note being in the state of Georgia this year.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/abcnews.go.com/amp/Politics/civil-rights-group-sue-georgia-voting-law/story%3Fid%3D76775186

So unless you think a law can only be racist if it’s explicitly states its discrimination than you only ignore the issue in the modern context by not distinguishing the difference between law in the abstract as a text and its implementation for demographics. Like how making it illegal to sleep under bridges is simply not a law that directly effects the rich as they would never do so.

[Gardener]

Yeah its age is apart of my point that the idea that you can implement laws under a racist intent if your frame it abstract enough is well known and has been for sometime now.
It relates itself to the explicitness of racism in 1954, yes, but just because folks aren’t using racial slurs doesn’t mean they don’t have racist notions and motivations.

Indeed the example doesn’t cite a specific example which is why I brought up the recent debates over making it more difficult for blacks to vote through various strategies under the pretense of voter fraud and such.
The big reform of note being in the state of Georgia this year.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/abcnews.go.com/amp/Politics/civil-rights-group-sue-georgia-voting-law/story%3Fid%3D76775186

So unless you think a law can only be racist if it’s explicitly states its discrimination than you only ignore the issue in the modern context by not distinguishing the difference between law in the abstract as a text and its implementation for demographics. Like how making it illegal to sleep under bridges is simply not a law that directly effects the rich as they would never do so.

Laws are rarely abstract things; they are usually quite precise. Where there IS ambiguity, the courts exist to nail them down.

I don't see how this relates to race, or to 'disenfranchisement'. Can you give me explicit examples of how 'Blacks' are disenfranchised by a currently extant law ?

[Pants-of-dog]

@Gardener

Did you look up felony disenfranchisement yet?

[Wellsy]

Laws are rarely abstract things; they are usually quite precise. Where there IS ambiguity, the courts exist to nail them down.

I don't see how this relates to race, or to 'disenfranchisement'. Can you give me explicit examples of how 'Blacks' are disenfranchised by a currently extant law ?

My point about abstractness of law was about abstract equality, where one ignores the differences between people in their treatment and how this can still reflect a discrminatory practice because the differences show that a law has no significance for a demographic and as such is in practice only a law for a particular demographic. As is self evident in the quote about both rich and poor being barred from sleeping under bridges, but only poor people would sleep under a bridge.

In regards to how voting supression is discussed today, in the very terms that it is in the abstract not discriminatory but in practice and effect can disproportionately impact certain demographics.
So drawing upon the recently passed bill in Georgia: https://int.nyt.com/data/documenttools/georgia-sb-202/8f7976cadb0bcb56/full.pdf
We have the following things implemented:

1) Lowering the time in which absentee ballots can be submitted.

Page 38: Not m̶o̶r̶e̶ earlier than 1̶8̶0̶ 78 days or less than 11 days prior to the date of the primary or election, or runoff of either, in which the elector desires to vote, any absentee elector may make, either by mail, by facsimile transmission, by electronic transmission, or in person in the registrar’s or absentee ballot clerk’s office, an application for an official ballot of the elector’s precinct to be voted at such primary, election, or runoff.

Georgia has cut by more than half the period during which voters may request an absentee ballot, from nearly six months before an election to less than three.

Why is this an issue? Well it can be the difference between being allowed to vote or not and back in 2018, the deadline itself was the basis for many not being able to vote.
https://www.apmreports.org/story/2019/10/28/georgia-voting-deadlines-2020-election

Deadlines for people to register to vote have long been an accepted part of American elections and aren't typically mentioned alongside voter ID laws and purges, which Democrats contend are voter suppression tactics. But an APM Reports investigation has found that 87,000 Georgians were barred from voting in 2018 because they'd registered after the deadline.

National experts who have studied the issue say that registration deadlines don't necessarily make elections more secure, as proponents claim, but they are a useful tool for preventing people from voting, especially those who don't follow politics closely. Georgia has one of the strictest deadlines in the country; if you want to vote on Election Day, you must register at least 29 days in advance.

2) Voter IDs

Page 38: In order to confirm the identity of the voter, such form shall require the elector to provide his or her name, date of birth, address as registered, address where the elector wishes the ballot to be mailed, and the number of his or her Georgia driver’s license or identification card issued … If such elector does not have a Georgia driver’s license or identification card … the elector shall affirm this fact in the manner prescribed in the application and the elector shall provide a copy of a form of identification … The form made available by the Secretary of State shall include a space to affix a photocopy or electronic image of such identification.

Page 57: In order to verify that the absentee ballot was voted by the elector who requested the ballot, the elector shall print the number of his or her Georgia driver’s license number or identification card … in the space provided on the outer oath envelope. The elector shall also print his or her date of birth in the space provided in the outer oath envelope.

If the elector does not have a Georgia driver’s license or state identification card … the elector shall so affirm in the space provided on the outer oath envelope and print the last four digits of his or her social security number in the space provided on the outer oath envelope.

If the elector does not have a Georgia driver’s license, identification card … or a social security number, the elector shall so affirm in the space provided on the outer oath envelope and place a copy of one of the forms of identification in the outer envelope

Previously, Georgia law required voters to simply sign their absentee ballot applications. Now they will have to provide the number from a driver’s license or an equivalent state-issued identification. This is virtually certain to limit access to absentee voting. The law also creates pitfalls for voters: If they fail to follow all the new steps, like printing a date of birth or in some cases including partial Social Security numbers, their ballots could be tossed out.

3) illegal for election officials to mail out absentee ballot applications to all voters

Page 39: A blank application for an absentee ballot shall be made available online by the Secretary of State and each election superintendent and registrar, but neither the Secretary of State, election superintendent, board of registrars, other governmental entity, nor employee or agent thereof shall send absentee ballot applications directly to any elector except upon request of such elector or a relative authorized to request an absentee ballot for such elector. No person or entity other than a relative authorized to request an absentee ballot for such elector or a person signing as assisting an illiterate or physically disabled elector shall send any elector an absentee ballot application that is prefilled with the elector’s required information set forth in this subparagraph.

When the coronavirus pandemic hit last year, Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, mailed absentee ballot applications to every registered voter in the state ahead of its June primary election. This led to absentee voting by record numbers of Georgians.

When Mr. Raffensperger didn’t mail applications again for the general election, several local government agencies did so, particularly in Georgia’s large urban counties — a move that the state has now made illegal. With the loss of automatically mailed applications, some voters will invariably not request ballots, since the applications also served as a reminder to people that they were eligible to vote.

The new law also forbids third-party groups to prefill applications for voters, which made applying for an absentee ballot easier for many voters.

4) Restriction on the amount of ballot drop boxes

Page 47: A board of registrars or absentee ballot clerk may establish additional drop boxes … but may only establish additional drop boxes totaling the lesser of either one drop box for every 100,000 active registered voters in the county or the number of advance voting locations in the county. Any additional drop boxes shall be evenly geographically distributed by population in the county.

Drop boxes … shall be established at the office of the board of registrars or absentee ballot clerk or inside locations at which advance voting … is conducted in the applicable primary, election, or runoff and may be open during the hours of advance voting at that location. Such drop boxes shall be closed when advance voting is not being conducted at that location.

For the 2020 election, there were 94 drop boxes across the four counties that make up the core of metropolitan Atlanta: Fulton, Cobb, DeKalb and Gwinnett. The new law limits the same four counties to a total of, at most, 23 drop boxes, based on the latest voter registration data. The number could be lower depending on how many early-voting sites the counties provide. There won’t just be fewer drop boxes. Instead of 24-hour access outdoors, the boxes must be placed indoors at government buildings and early-voting sites and will thus be unavailable for voters to drop off their ballots during evenings and other nonbusiness hours.

5)Banning of mobile voting

Page 31: The superintendent of a county or the governing authority of a municipality shall have discretion to procure and provide portable or movable polling facilities of adequate size for any precinct; provided, however, that buses and other readily movable facilities shall only be used in emergencies declared by the Governor … to supplement the capacity of the polling place where the emergency circumstance occurred.

Last year, Fulton County, which includes most of Atlanta, had two recreational vehicles that traversed the county during the early voting periods, effectively bringing polling sites to people at churches, parks and public libraries. In the November election, more than 11,200 people voted at the two vehicles in Fulton County.

Georgia has now outlawed this practice, unless the governor declares a state of emergency to allow it

6) Differential early voting access

Page 59: There shall be a period of advance voting that shall commence: (A) On the fourth Monday immediately prior to each primary or election; and (̶B̶)̶ ̶O̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶f̶o̶u̶r̶t̶h̶ ̶M̶o̶n̶d̶a̶y̶ ̶i̶m̶m̶e̶d̶i̶a̶t̶e̶l̶y̶ ̶p̶r̶i̶o̶r̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶a̶ ̶r̶u̶n̶o̶f̶f̶ ̶f̶r̶o̶m̶ ̶a̶ ̶g̶e̶n̶e̶r̶a̶l̶ ̶p̶r̶i̶m̶a̶r̶y̶;̶ ̶(̶C̶)̶ ̶O̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶f̶o̶u̶r̶t̶h̶ ̶M̶o̶n̶d̶a̶y̶ ̶i̶m̶m̶e̶d̶i̶a̶t̶e̶l̶y̶ ̶p̶r̶i̶o̶r̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶a̶ ̶r̶u̶n̶o̶f̶f̶ ̶f̶r̶o̶m̶ ̶a̶ ̶g̶e̶n̶e̶r̶a̶l̶ ̶e̶l̶e̶c̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶w̶h̶i̶c̶h̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶r̶e̶ ̶a̶r̶e̶ ̶c̶a̶n̶d̶i̶d̶a̶t̶e̶s̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶a̶ ̶f̶e̶d̶e̶r̶a̶l̶ ̶o̶f̶f̶i̶c̶e̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶b̶a̶l̶l̶o̶t̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶r̶u̶n̶o̶f̶f̶;̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶(̶D̶)̶(B) As soon as possible prior to a runoff from any o̶t̶h̶e̶r̶ general primary or election i̶n̶ ̶w̶h̶i̶c̶h̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶r̶e̶ ̶a̶r̶e̶ ̶o̶n̶l̶y̶ ̶s̶t̶a̶t̶e̶ ̶o̶r̶ ̶c̶o̶u̶n̶t̶y̶ ̶c̶a̶n̶d̶i̶d̶a̶t̶e̶s̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶b̶a̶l̶l̶o̶t̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶r̶u̶n̶o̶f̶f̶ but no later than the second Monday immediately prior to such runoff and shall end on the Friday immediately prior to each primary, election, or runoff.

Voting shall be conducted d̶u̶r̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶n̶o̶r̶m̶a̶l̶ ̶b̶u̶s̶i̶n̶e̶s̶s̶ ̶h̶o̶u̶r̶s̶ beginning at 9 a.m. and ending at 5 p.m. on weekdays, other than observed state holidays, during such period and shall be conducted on the second S̶a̶t̶u̶r̶d̶a̶y̶ and third Saturdays during the hours of 9 a.m. through 5 p.m. and, if the registrar or absentee ballot clerk so chooses, the second Sunday, the third Sunday, or both the second and third Sundays prior to a primary or election during the hours o̶f̶ ̶9̶ ̶a̶.̶m̶.̶ ̶t̶h̶r̶o̶u̶g̶h̶ ̶4̶ ̶p̶.̶m̶.̶ determined by the registrar or absentee ballot clerk, but no longer than 7 a.m. through 7 p.m.

Page 60: Except as otherwise provided in this paragraph, c̶o̶u̶n̶t̶i̶e̶s̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶m̶u̶n̶i̶c̶i̶p̶a̶l̶i̶t̶i̶e̶s̶ the registrars may extend the hours for voting b̶e̶y̶o̶n̶d̶ ̶r̶e̶g̶u̶l̶a̶r̶ ̶b̶u̶s̶i̶n̶e̶s̶s̶ ̶h̶o̶u̶r̶s̶ to permit advance voting from 7 a.m. until 7 p.m. and may provide for additional voting locations … to suit the needs of the electors of the jurisdiction at their option; provided, however, that voting shall occur only on the days specified in this paragraph and counties and municipalities shall not be authorized to conduct advance voting on any other days.

These new strict rules on early voting hours are likely to curtail voting access for Georgians who work daytime hours or have less flexible schedules and who may be unable to return an absentee ballot.

The provision requires counties to hold early voting during weekday working hours — 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. — and says it may be held for longer but may not take place before 7 a.m. or after 7 p.m. on those days. The early voting period will begin four weeks before an election. The previous iteration of the law called only for early voting during “normal business hours” and left it up to counties to determine those hours.

The provision also adds a second required Saturday of early voting (the previous law required only one), which will increase access to early voting in most of the state’s rural counties, where election administrators have often been short-staffed and have offered fewer hours of early voting. Most larger counties in the state already offered multiple weekend days of early voting.

The law doesn’t require the availability of early voting on Sundays, which means that counties can choose whether to open for early voting on up to two Sundays before an election.

Counties that choose not to open on Sundays would be limiting ballot access for parishioners at Black churches that have often organized parishioners to vote after Sunday services.

And it goes on about how they made it illegal to provide food and water to people waiting in line, there I also less flexibility on where you can vote because if you go to the wrong precinct you can't vote, rather than be flexible and accommodate out of precint voters.
- https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/02/us/politics/georgia-voting-law-annotated.html

The pretense behind such reforms is to make voting more secure against fraud but this seems largely baseless and as such, driven but ulterior motives which many speculate based on it's implications often targets demographics seen as likely to vote democrat, of which many are often in cities and ethnically diverse communities.
From a federal judge in Wisconsin.
https://via.hypothes.is/http://elections.wi.gov/sites/default/files/news/petersonruling_pdf_14890.pdf

The evidence in this case casts doubt on the notion that voter ID laws foster integrity and confidence. The Wisconsin experience demonstrates that a preoccupation with mostly phantom election fraud leads to real incidents of disenfranchisement, which undermine rather than enhance confidence in elections, particularly in minority communities. To put it bluntly, Wisconsin’s strict version of voter ID law is a cure worse than the disease.
...
he most pointed problem with Wisconsin’s voter ID law is that it lacks a functioning safety netfor qualified electors who cannot get a voter ID with reasonable effort. The IDPP is supposed to be this safety net, but as Mrs. Smith’s story illustrates, the IDPP is pretty much a disaster. It disenfranchised about 100 qualified electors—the vast majority of whom were African American or Latino—who should have been givenIDs to vote in the April 2016 primary. But the problem is deeper than that: even voters who succeed in the IDPP manage to get an ID only after surmounting severe burdens. If the petitioner lacks a birth certificate and does not have one of the usual alternatives to a birth certificate, on average, it takesfive communications with the DMV after the initial application to get an ID. I conclude that the IDPP is unconstitutional and needs to be reformed or replaced.

Part of the issue arising from intensely restrictive voter ID laws is that it has come after the supreme court pretty much strike down parts of the voting rights act of 1965. Resulting in states not having to be checked in their voting reforms and as such have made it increasingly difficult.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/with-voting-rights-act-out-states-push-voter-id-laws/
Perhaps you might want to drill onto how this isn't strictly a discriminatory against say blacks, but at this could be a weak point in emphasizing that something can be discriminatory in practice even if it isn't directly applied to every individual but has a broad impact upon a demographic which isn't disqualified by exceptions.
And maybe you want me to make even more explicit the connections from these points and to the asserted disproportionate impact on say blacks or in places like Texas, latinos.
Maybe I will follow up with that, but these sort of things on the face of it cannot be dismissed.

And this doesn't even get into the bullshit of gerrymandering that is an absolute joke at this point.

[Julian658]

And what current black leaders are keeping slavery fresh in peoples minds? As it seems it is only a talking point in making the connection to the present conditions but often the focus of politics is on present issues, it is just also the case that our history both individually and as a society are not independent of history.
One doesn't need to talk about slavery to necessarily raise concerns over policing in the last couple of decades.
At the same time though, a short term focus also makes it impossible to answer, why are things like they are now?

The socioeconomic hierarchy can be explained to a large extent by the past, no question about it. Therefore, it will take some time before there is less discrepancy between those above and those below. We already have an explanation, however, there is more to this issue. The problem has much more than one variable i.e. racism and slavery. Historically all efforts have been placed on the injustices of the past as the root of all problems. I wish someone would come up with a broader approach to solve the issue of inequality.

I see your point in stating that there might be better alternatives of political aims but I think we should first establish what is the importance or significance of the statues in the first place.
It's not an economic change but I don't think it is necessarily insignificant either and hence ht political tension around it. If it was a non-issue, then they could be changed or not with relative ease but that isn't the case so it reflects a tension in the US.

And I also would emphasize that iconclasm isn't some unique thing to the US but is a common struggle historically where the resistance to such change of symbols is that they're treated as somehow sacred and holy to a particular view. Again, we see the issue over the sort of figures and values that are valorized.
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/06/statues-removal-antiracism-columbus

Also consider that such confederate statues themselves were raised during the struggles of civil rights, they being a reaction against black struggles. A struggle necessarily has more than one side struggling, there is the reaction that is built up and pressed to act and we must act what motivates each side. Some of the common defenses against changing or removing statues seem to be purposely vague as not to explicitly state the sort of ideas which motivate their defense.

Your position is elegantly stated and I see no reason to refute your views. However, there are bigger fish to fry and these fish are ignored. In the early days fighting for civil rights was very easy because the barriers were sharply defined and well demarcated: Segregation, signs that said no colored people allowed, riding in the back of the bus, red lining, etc, etc. It was rather simple to mount a fight in that era because the racism was blatantly obvious.

Today most of the easily seen barriers have disappeared, but inequality remains. People tend to look at statistics and assume that the lack equal representation must mean racism. IN other words equal opportunity that does not yield equal results must mean racism. This is labeled as systemic racism, but at times it becomes somewhat abstract and hard to define. OTOH, the statues are not abstract or some sort of statistical analysis. The statues are obvious and they represent a sordid past. Therefore, it is easy to use them as the focal point of the battle.

You don't state what contradictions you see explicitly, and I think one also has to be more specific to identify the individual or social subject of such contradictions otherwise one is arbitrarily tying things together under a label which may or may not hold in reality. For example if I posed that the civil rights movement was one of contradictions because I compare those who followed MLK Jr with Malcolm X in their principles, they would in a sense be correct that they have very different means to the same end, but within the movements themselves, they need not be so directly inconsistent.
There can be contradictions between a leader and their followers even where a leader pushes back against spontaneous actions of followers who thought themselves acting in the spirit of the movemnt.
But without identifying the actual subjects, one ends up with vague condemnations of liberals, leftists, conservatives or whatever which just becomes a vague umbrella term to shove all sorts of shit under without any meaningful connection. I can create castles in the sky in such a fashion.

In general, I think we should discuss what is the value of certain figures who are represented in public spaces, who have buildings named after them? Why valorize them? Back in Australia, I lived in a city that had a statue of King George, and what shit does an average Australian care for King George, what greatness does he represent to any republican who detests the Constitutional monarchy that Australia formally is.
Even in Melbourne on old buildings see the attribution to a wealthy individual as responsible for its construction but of course the wealthy do not labor on such things, there is no plaque for the name of workers who did it.
This isn't a point against any representative of a people or public figure but it's not incontentious to say that a lot of those who are praised are not well regarded in the present and that people may decide to remove them as symbols to valorize as they don't wish for them to be celebrated. Just as someone who is anti-communist does not wish to celebrate certain figures like Lenin, Marx or who ever and would change things so as to remove their celebration as part of the country.

I am also a bit skeptical of many associations with religion in its dogmatic sense because I don't think this is something confined to religion which serves only in the modernist attack on religion in the past but has since become a staple in representing the connotations of being antiquated, dogmatic, irrational and so on.
It relies on negative connotations for a rhetorical point, in the same way one may rhetorically present one's opponents as effemininate. This is why McWhorter after making the comparison to religious scripture with the idea of America being based on racism is not that it is indefensible, as much as he is attacking the idea that raising questions leads to a knee jerk reaction of condemnation rather than thinking through things. The whole liberal ideal, on the other hand, one can take advantage of the idiot liberal who fully subscribes to such ideas of simply talking things out where we see JAQing off, just asking questions. Some are definitely dismissive in engaging someone who they disagree with and its all very emotional, but at the same time, there are definitely people framed as neutral who are playing things subtlety also.
This is where Zizek would argue that the liberal who argues pure facts with a holocaust denier is an idiot because many of the facts will indeed be true but the real false thing is the belief which motivates their fixation on those facts which are seen as false.
This is where we necessarily infer the sort of motivations behind a person's actions like if someone seems fixated on the crime committed by black Americans, it raises questions.
If I denied any sympathy and interest in Marxism for example, it would come off as insincere as I clearly defend many things associated with it and use material from Marxist figures.
It's where our actions build a pattern which speaks to something beyond our words in that moment.

Those that fight racism in America could learn a lot from Zizek. He is not blinded by pseudo-religious ideas or emotion. He is a non-PC left winger and I really love the guy. As for pseudo-religion watch this:

Lastly, the problem with those that fight racism is that they are emotionally involved and may even have some post racism PTSD. BTW, I know quite well some will yell racism because i posted the above. And when they yell racism they are simply behaving like religionists.

[Wellsy]

The socioeconomic hierarchy can be explained to a large extent to the past, no question about it. Therefore, it will take some time before there is less discrepancy between those above and those below. We already have an explanation, however, there is more to this issue. The problem has much more than one variable i.e. racism and slavery. Historically all efforts have been placed on the injustices of the past as the root of all problems. I wish someone would come up with a broader approach to solve the issue of inequality.

Indeed, and part of the struggle is that progress isn't an inevitability but always hard won, and is of course emphasized that efforts to change things always have their resistance other than the mere inertia of old habits.
Indeed, slavery doesn't have a direct causality, rather things have changed and as such so has the struggle although it has its origins in the intense ideological nature of slavery as an institution.
Ancient slavery did not have the same sort of corresponding ideology and there was some more mobility out of slavery which wasn't the case in the asserted inherent inadequacies of blacks that came to justify slavery economically in the US.
I am of the mindset of following Marx's emphasis on class as the entry point in which to consider the relation of things. It simply grounds things better although looking at class is insufficient in explaining everything as a whole, it is a good starting point.
I see it as often stronger against the liberal tendency to emphasize culture and attitudes alone over and above the structures of everyday life, which is where I see the relevance of changing the statues, it's about creating the public space towards particular values and ways of life. This of course requires the combination of stretching out worker's sense of time beyond survival also, to experience life further than a series of present moments, rushing from one thing to the next.

However I don't even see it as an issue of inequality primarily as I think the effort to realize the liberal ideal of equality simply loses sight that abstract equality is already largely achieved and a change more radical than limiting the disparties in things is required. That abstract equality is like Kant's universal categorical imperative, it presumes a content which it doesn't necessarily entail.
https://scholarcommons.scu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1048&context=phi

The argument against Kant, then, is not that the categorical imperative is contentless. The
argument is that the categorical imperative presupposes it content; it takes up its content
uncritically. The Kantian formulating a maxim concerning theft assumes that private property is
given. As Hegel puts it in the Phenomenology, “Laws are … tested; and for the consciousness
which tests them they are already given. It takes up their content simply as it is, without
concerning itself … with the particularity and contingency inherent in its reality … its attitude
towards it is just as uncomplicated as is its being a criterion for testing it.”
126
...
While Hegel is overstating his case in holding that anything can be made into a moral law, nevertheless, his basic point is that dierent cultures can and have established very dierent things as moral laws—very dierent forms of property, for example. And it is obvious that quite consistent social organizations can be built around such dierent laws. The principle of universalization is not going to show us that all but one of these forms of property and social organization are contradictory; there will at least be many dierent forms of property and social organization that it will not show to be contradictory. The categorical imperative, then, will not tell us which of these forms of property is right. Only after we are given one of these forms of property as right can the categorical imperative begin to tell us what would be an act of theft and what would not.

Attempts to realize abstract equality in it's content only lead to the sort of authoritarianism people decry as unjust. Because it means differential treatment which contradicts abstract inequality.
It also tends towards a statist approach and I don't much care for the strength of the state in all things and often see it as largely incomptent. Even if it is competent in something it struggles with the political struggle where another election can utterly destroy gains made quicker than they were developed. I see it in Australia where certain things are gutted of their funding and then said to be inherent failure of policy rather than of actual resources and political will.
https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/works/equality.htm

“Equality” is an inherently abstract conception inasmuch as it implies the abstraction of some measure from two subjects which can be brought into quantitative comparison with one another. The notion of equality as equality of wealth therefore poses the measurement of a person by their property, and is therefore inherently dehumanising. Further, it implies a process of measurement and equalisation, a policeman so to speak to keep the queue in line. Critics of the redistributive notion of equality therefore have a good point. Even Amartya Sen’s[4] improved notion of distributive equality still suffers from the same defect: who has the right to administer people’s lives so as to ensure “equality of capability"?

Abstract equality works for some things like universal suffrage and in that it still holds some ethical common sense for the average person such that to see someone contradict it explicitly is offensive.
But in terms of distribution, it seems to conceive of distribution as somehow independent of production. This is something against the social democratic tendency to simply redistribute wealth, it's not necessarily a terrible idea but doesn't essentially solve the problem but tries to manage it until we return to the same problem again. Like charity temporarily abating someone's struggles but not solving the issue of poverty generally.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch01.htm

The structure [Gliederung] of distribution is completely determined by the structure of production. Distribution is itself a product of production, not only in its object, in that only the results of production can be distributed, but also in its form, in that the specific kind of participation in production determines the specific forms of distribution, i.e. the pattern of participation in distribution. It is altogether an illusion to posit land in production, ground rent in distribution, etc. Thus, economists such as Ricardo, who are the most frequently accused of focusing on production alone, have defined distribution as the exclusive object of economics, because they instinctively conceived the forms of distribution as the most specific expression into which the agents of production of a given society are cast. To the single individual, of course, distribution appears as a social law which determines his position within the system of production within which he produces, and which therefore precedes production. The individual comes into the world possessing neither capital nor land. Social distribution assigns him at birth to wage labour. But this situation of being assigned is itself a consequence of the existence of capital and landed property as independent agents of production.

As regards whole societies, distribution seems to precede production and to determine it in yet another respect, almost as if it were a pre-economic fact. A conquering people divides the land among the conquerors, thus imposes a certain distribution and form of property in land, and thus determines production. Or it enslaves the conquered and so makes slave labour the foundation of production. Or a people rises in revolution and smashes the great landed estates into small parcels, and hence, by this new distribution, gives production a new character. Or a system of laws assigns property in land to certain families in perpetuity, or distributes labour [as] a hereditary privilege and thus confines it within certain castes. In all these cases, and they are all historical, it seems that distribution is not structured and determined by production, but rather the opposite, production by distribution.

In the shallowest conception, distribution appears as the distribution of products, and hence as further removed from and quasi-independent of production. But before distribution can be the distribution of products, it is: (1) the distribution of the instruments of production, and (2), which is a further specification of the same relation, the distribution of the members of the society among the different kinds of production. (Subsumption of the individuals under specific relations of production.) The distribution of products is evidently only a result of this distribution, which is comprised within the process of production itself and determines the structure of production. To examine production while disregarding this internal distribution within it is obviously an empty abstraction; while conversely, the distribution of products follows by itself from this distribution which forms an original moment of production. Ricardo, whose concern was to grasp the specific social structure of modern production, and who is the economist of production par excellence, declares for precisely that reason that not production but distribution is the proper study of modern economics. [18] This again shows the ineptitude of those economists who portray production as an eternal truth while banishing history to the realm of distribution.

The question of the relation between this production-determining distribution, and production, belongs evidently within production itself. If it is said that, since production must begin with a certain distribution of the instruments of production, it follows that distribution at least in this sense precedes and forms the presupposition of production, then the reply must be that production does indeed have its determinants and preconditions which form its moments. At the very beginning these may appear as spontaneous, natural. But by the process of production itself they are transformed from natural into historic determinants, and if they appear to one epoch as natural presuppositions of production, they were its historic product for another. Within production itself they are constantly being changed. The application of machinery, for example, changed the distribution of instruments of production as well as of products. Modern large-scale landed property is itself the product of modern commerce and of modern industry, as well as of the application of the latter to agriculture. The questions raised above all reduce themselves in the last instance to the role played by general-historical relations in production, and their relation to the movement of history generally. The question evidently belongs within the treatment and investigation of production itself.

Your position is elegantly stated and I see no reason to refute your views. However, there are bigger fish to fry and these fish are ignored. In the early days fighting for civil rights was very easy because the barriers were sharply defined and well demarcated: Segregation, signs that said no colored people allowed, riding in the back of the bus, red lining, etc, etc. It was rather simple to mount a fight in that era because the racism was blatantly obvious.

Today most of the easily seen barriers have disappeared, but inequality remains. People tend to look at statistics and assume that the lack equal representation must mean racism. IN other words equal opportunity that does not yield equal results must mean racism. This is labeled as systemic racism, but at times it becomes somewhat abstract and hard to define. OTOH, the statues are not abstract or some sort of statistical analysis. The statues are obvious and they represent a sordid past. Therefore, it is easy to use them as the focal point of the battle.

Indeed, I think the struggle against formal discrimination in law with the natural popularity of liberalism with many made it quite compelling in spite of people's anti-liberal sentiments. Abstract equality fits quite well with capitalism in the west.
And now there are 'invisible' boundaries such as economic segregation such that one doesn't need a jim crow law to maintain things. We do live in much more complex times.

http://rickroderick.org/108-philosophy-and-post-modern-culture-1990/

In Eastern Europe they’ll believe we have got a democracy. They will love to have a VCR, and with each step forward they will become more entrapped in the same totalitarian system that is much more subtle than the crude and simple one that many of them have overthrown. What a joy to overthrow a crude and simple totalitarian system. I mean all of us enjoyed that, right? Dancing on the wall was fun, because that system was so crude, and not postmodern enough. They didn’t understand that there are walls that you can build that cannot be seen between people.

Those are harder walls to overthrow, the walls they build between different races and classes and sexes in our society. Those walls are much more difficult to overthrow than crude and stupid walls like The Great Wall of China, which doesn’t wall anybody out, it just walls you in. But the stupid forms of totalitarianism build these walls in a way that people can storm them. The global system that I am talking about, not is already here, perhaps, but is on its way. Perhaps. About the present and future you can just guess. I mean, you know, that’s what scientists do too, make their best guess. You can just guess. But about this system, the walls will be much harder to storm, because they won’t be the kind that will be available for storming. Hard to storm the walls on TV, in fact you’ll already – like in Total Recall – have the feeling you have already stormed them. You’ve already… I mean, you know, the guy in Total Recall, well, he has already won the revolution, it’s cool. He did it in ten minutes sitting in a chair injected with the same emotions.

The above was said in the 80's.

Well I can only say I sympathize with the symbolic struggle over struggles within the broader issue of claiming the public space within a kind of ideological struggle against certain views and values, to displace their foothold will be a good sign of the strength against those views if it can be achieved against those who would protect them.
Although I do think statues are for the most part somewhat meaningless to a lot of people who haven't the time to go to the park and even learn about what those figures represent.

Those that fight racism in America could learn a lot from Zizek. He is not blinded by pseudo-religious ideas or emotion. He is a non-PC left winger and I really love the guy. As for pseudo-religion watch this:

Lastly, the problem with those that fight racism is that they are emotionally involved and may even have some post racism PTSD. BTW, I know quite well some will yell racism because i posted the above. And when they yell racism they are simply behaving like religionists.

I'm not sure how much the headline is on point as it frames it as asking for forgiveness from that black community but listening to it, it doesn't seem directly addressed to them but indirectly as its a prayer to God.
Which makes the analogy of it being like a psuedo-religion amusing as they seem to be actually religious folk who wish to pray on the matter. Maybe that's weird for religious folk, but not having been raised within Church and only having limited exposure to religion, I can't say that that video shows anything too out of the ordinary for American Christians.
What hints that it is somewhat directed at those black people is that they're not praying with them, but there does seem to be other shows where they do so.

Just seems like strange religious stuff to me. I can't pretend to understand it.
The second one seems more clearly cringey, and I agree with the sentiment that I don't much care for self loathing whites as it is sort of over indulgent in emotion which I don't care for.
A bit like how police officers came out and were all teary eyed while they themselves were leaders who were personally implicated in discriminatory policing and brutal acts themselves.
It's a good distraction and false sense of harmony, it might make them feel good perhaps.

[SpecialOlympian]

Laws are rarely abstract things; they are usually quite precise. Where there IS ambiguity, the courts exist to nail them down.

I don't see how this relates to race, or to 'disenfranchisement'. Can you give me explicit examples of how 'Blacks' are disenfranchised by a currently extant law ?

There's felony disenfranchisement as POD outlined, but also voter ID laws and screwing with the elections themselves.

Here's an example: You are a poor person (of any race) living in a state that requires voter ID. However, your local DMV or license issuing office is only open the third Thursday of every month. Or it may be 170 miles away and you have no car. Then on top of that, getting the documentation to obtain an ID can cost you $75-$150.

Then even assuming you can get time off of your job, the documentation, and the transportation necessary to obtain the ID it turns out that you registered to vote 6 years ago, but the state now has laws requiring that anyone who hasn't voted in four years is now purged from the rolls. Also the voting station you went to was purposely understaffed and serves a much larger area than polling stations in more affluent parts of your state, so the lines are long and made so to discourage voting.

These are laws that claim to be racially blind attempts to fight voter fraud, which is a negligible problem at best if not nearly non-existent. But in practice they end up targeting poor, largely minority counties.

You also have examples where in Texas a gun permit can be used as ID, something white citizens are more likely to have, while IDs issued by state colleges to populations that tend to be poorer and non-white are not accepted.

It's all done on purpose by people who know what they're doing, including our resident racists who make the same arguments about election integrity. And it's not hard to figure this out when you realize that the GOP represents a minority population of this country, has unpopular positions that largely benefit a minority of wealthy people, and as such unfettered democracy is an obstacle that must be overcome.

If you somehow find it hard to believe that active disenfranchisement is a thing then you are free to google "US voter suppression and disenfranchisement laws" and find a wealth of articles and academic studies on the matter.

[Gardener]

My point about abstractness of law was about abstract equality, where one ignores the differences between people in their treatment and how this can still reflect a discrminatory practice because the differences show that a law has no significance for a demographic and as such is in practice only a law for a particular demographic. As is self evident in the quote about both rich and poor being barred from sleeping under bridges, but only poor people would sleep under a bridge.

So ignoring the difference between black and white people in their treatment is discriminatory ? Seriously ?
What's next ? The sky is green ? Pigs fly ?

In regards to how voting supression is discussed today, in the very terms that it is in the abstract not discriminatory but in practice and effect can disproportionately impact certain demographics.
So drawing upon the recently passed bill in Georgia: https://int.nyt.com/data/documenttools/georgia-sb-202/8f7976cadb0bcb56/full.pdf
We have the following things implemented:
......

How is ANY of that differentially disadvantageous to blacks compared to whites ?

[Julian658]

There's felony disenfranchisement as POD outlined, but also voter ID laws and screwing with the elections themselves.

Here's an example: You are a poor person (of any race) living in a state that requires voter ID. However, your local DMV or license issuing office is only open the third Thursday of every month. Or it may be 170 miles away and you have no car. Then on top of that, getting the documentation to obtain an ID can cost you $75-$150.

Then even assuming you can get time off of your job, the documentation, and the transportation necessary to obtain the ID it turns out that you registered to vote 6 years ago, but the state now has laws requiring that anyone who hasn't voted in four years is now purged from the rolls. Also the voting station you went to was purposely understaffed and serves a much larger area than polling stations in more affluent parts of your state, so the lines are long and made so to discourage voting.

These are laws that claim to be racially blind attempts to fight voter fraud, which is a negligible problem at best if not nearly non-existent. But in practice they end up targeting poor, largely minority counties.

You also have examples where in Texas a gun permit can be used as ID, something white citizens are more likely to have, while IDs issued by state colleges to populations that tend to be poorer and non-white are not accepted.

It's all done on purpose by people who know what they're doing, including our resident racists who make the same arguments about election integrity. And it's not hard to figure this out when you realize that the GOP represents a minority population of this country, has unpopular positions that largely benefit a minority of wealthy people, and as such unfettered democracy is an obstacle that must be overcome.

If you somehow find it hard to believe that active disenfranchisement is a thing then you are free to google "US voter suppression and disenfranchisement laws" and find a wealth of articles and academic studies on the matter.

White left wingers assume black people are not savvy enough to have ID. That is racist to the core.

[late]

White left wingers assume black people are not savvy enough to have ID.

Some states are trying to set up a marathon. You go to one agency, they say you need something from another agency. Go there, and there are suddenly fees and more requirements.

This is what the Voting Rights Act was supposed to stop.

Someone working 2 or 3 jobs will have trouble dealing with that. An 80 year old grandmother without a car will find it close to impossible, even with help.

Which was the idea, of course.

Racist doesn't begin to describe it...

[Wellsy]

So ignoring the difference between black and white people in their treatment is discriminatory ? Seriously ?
What's next ? The sky is green ? Pigs fly ?

I’m not sure what the impasse is here. So lets take a step back and simplify for you.
Remember the quote:

“ The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.”

Such a law could simply state it is illegal to sleep under bridges. Do you think such a law effects both rich and poor equally in its implementation?

The idea of treating everyone the same is in fact a willful targetting of the polr for better or worse. Because wealthy people aren’t sleeping under bridges.

A more explicit difference being banning abortions, who does that dirextly affect more men or women? Women of course because men don’t get pregnant. But the law can be written without reference to anyone in particular of course.
Do you get the point here? The law doesn’t explicitly discriminate against anyone but in its actual practice it disproportionately impacts one demographic. So one can in wording avoid any explicitness of discrimination.
One doesn’t have to write demographic content into law for it to be discriminatory in practice.

How is ANY of that differentially disadvantageous to blacks compared to whites ?

Lets at least start with the idea before we get more empirical as you’re still at the point of understanding the above point.
Going back to my post with the quote from the Wisconsin federal judge:

[quote]The most pointed problem with Wisconsin’s voter ID law is that it lacks a functioning safety netfor qualified electors who cannot get a voter ID with reasonable effort. The IDPP is supposed to be this safety net, but as Mrs. Smith’s story illustrates, the IDPP is pretty much a disaster. It disenfranchised about 100 qualified electors—the vast majority of whom were African American or Latino—who should have been givenIDs to vote in the April 2016 primary.
[quote]
This illustrates the notion of how it may disproportionately affect a demographic while not explicitly barring anyone on race.

Do you get the above? If so we can continue further but if you don’t I can’t make my point much clearer. That a law can disproportionately impact some demographics by a great degree while not formally barring them. So its not a formal restriction of blacks voting but you don’t need to bar every black American to get the same results of you’re able to make it increasingly difficult for them to vote such that they don’t or that their votes are disqualified for technical reasons such as being late within an increasingly narrowed time limit for early voting.

The laws in their restrictiveness are generally terrible regardless of the racial disparity in voting they arbitrarily create. Its a clear intention to undermine democratic processes.

[Julian658]

Indeed, and part of the struggle is that progress isn't an inevitability but always hard won, and is of course emphasized that efforts to change things always have their resistance other than the mere inertia of old habits.
Indeed, slavery doesn't have a direct causality, rather things have changed and as such so has the struggle although it has its origins in the intense ideological nature of slavery as an institution.
Ancient slavery did not have the same sort of corresponding ideology and there was some more mobility out of slavery which wasn't the case in the asserted inherent inadequacies of blacks that came to justify slavery economically in the US.
I am of the mindset of following Marx's emphasis on class as the entry point in which to consider the relation of things. It simply grounds things better although looking at class is insufficient in explaining everything as a whole, it is a good starting point.

The Matthew principle states that advantage begets more advantage. That perpetuates the socioeconomic hierarchy.




Doing well in life is easy with a solid family that has resources. Sometimes people fail in this system, but the chances are lower. The left remedy is suboptimal in that it proposes lowering of resources for the well to do to reduce the gap in wealth or achievement. Ideally one would leave those with resources alone and try to help those without resources. In this context those that come with a family with no resources are more common among American blacks and other minorities. However, whites that come form a family with no resources will also struggle.

I am not certain about how to approach the problem. Providing equal opportunities does not lead to equal outcomes. Besides the lack of monetary resources some families lack the memes of conscientiousness , motivation, and hard work to do well in life.

I see it as often stronger against the liberal tendency to emphasize culture and attitudes alone over and above the structures of everyday life, which is where I see the relevance of changing the statues, it's about creating the public space towards particular values and ways of life. This of course requires the combination of stretching out worker's sense of time beyond survival also, to experience life further than a series of present moments, rushing from one thing to the next.

Honestly, the statues are an issue because the media promoted that concept very heavily. IN the USA the media has enormous power in deciding what are the issues of the day. Racial issues increase ratings and hence profits.

However I don't even see it as an issue of inequality primarily as I think the effort to realize the liberal ideal of equality simply loses sight that abstract equality is already largely achieved and a change more radical than limiting the disparties in things is required. That abstract equality is like Kant's universal categorical imperative, it presumes a content which it doesn't necessarily entail.
https://scholarcommons.scu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1048&context=phi

Do you ever wonder why everybody stops at a red light? Slowly but surely people are changing their ways into a system that is fair. However, we will always have a hierarchy of talent and competence that will naturally create achievement gaps. There is no equality among humans.

Attempts to realize abstract equality in it's content only lead to the sort of authoritarianism people decry as unjust. Because it means differential treatment which contradicts abstract inequality.

That is why socialism requires an authoritarian system

To be continued

[Gardener]

I’m not sure what the impasse is here. So lets take a step back and simplify for you.
Remember the quote:

“ The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.”

Such a law could simply state it is illegal to sleep under bridges. Do you think such a law effects both rich and poor equally in its implementation?

The idea of treating everyone the same is in fact a willful targetting of the polr for better or worse. Because wealthy people aren’t sleeping under bridges.

A more explicit difference being banning abortions, who does that dirextly affect more men or women? Women of course because men don’t get pregnant. But the law can be written without reference to anyone in particular of course.
Do you get the point here? The law doesn’t explicitly discriminate against anyone but in its actual practice it disproportionately impacts one demographic. So one can in wording avoid any explicitness of discrimination.
One doesn’t have to write demographic content into law for it to be discriminatory in practice.

That is a somewhat contrived example. We are talking about discrimination against black people. How does any of that apply ?

Lets at least start with the idea before we get more empirical as you’re still at the point of understanding the above point.
Going back to my post with the quote from the Wisconsin federal judge:

Lets see.. firstly, Wisconsin has a population of almost 6 million. And you are talking about 100 people ? That's less than 0.002%. And we're supposed to be upset by that ? Secondly; why was the 'vast majority' of these 100 potential electors unable to get ID ? What stopped them ?

Do you get the above? If so we can continue further but if you don’t I can’t make my point much clearer. That a law can disproportionately impact some demographics by a great degree while not formally barring them.

This is a strange useage of language. Suddenly 0.002% becomes a 'disproportional impact' ? Be that as it may; I would suggest that in the example you cite, it is NOT the law that is at fault; it is some other feature of the demographic.

[Pants-of-dog]

That is a somewhat contrived example. We are talking about discrimination against black people. How does any of that apply ?


Lets see.. firstly, Wisconsin has a population of almost 6 million. And you are talking about 100 people ? That's less than 0.002%. And we're supposed to be upset by that ? Secondly; why was the 'vast majority' of these 100 potential electors unable to get ID ? What stopped them ?

Republicans are constantly trying to limit the black vote.

Some have even admitted it, like Jim Greer.

That is the point behind all the law changes in Georgia, voter ID laws, purging voter rolls, and a host of other efforts.

Also, look up “felony disenfranchisement”.

[Julian658]

Republicans are constantly trying to limit the black vote.

Some have even admitted it, like Jim Greer.

That is the point behind all the law changes in Georgia, voter ID laws, purging voter rolls, and a host of other efforts.

Also, look up “felony disenfranchisement”.

Democrats feel some black people are not capable of getting an ID. That is known as condescending racism of low expectations POD.