The Barbershop: Hey, Soc. Since you’re here, we wanna run something else by you before you get up.
Socrates: No problem
The Barbershop: What’s the story behind all this voter suppression stuff? I thought we got pass all that back in the 60’s when my father was this young brotha’s age.
Socrates: Well to begin with, this issue is a classic example of one of my first laws of politics. When you hear an elected official in America, at any level, publicly explain why they are against something, whatever they are saying ain’t the reason.
The Barbershop: You mean they’re lying?
Socrates: Not necessarily. What they’re saying could be true, but what they’re saying is not the real reason why they’re opposing the issue being considered.
The Barbershop: I get it, they might not be lying but they’re definitely not telling the truth.
Socrates: You got it! Now when you talk about white Republicans and voting rights for Black people, they’re just flat ass lying.
The Barbershop: Well, if they’re lying about election integrity, what’s the real deal?
Socrates: First, let me give you some context; some history really. America was not meant to be a universal democracy. The white men who founded America were mostly rich merchants, plantation owners and land speculators. Most were in America’s economic elite.
When they wrote, “We the People,” in the preamble to the Constitution, they didn’t forget to put you in the Constitution, they left you out on purpose. They also intentionally left out the Indigenous People, women and poor white men.
The Barbershop: So, you’re saying that white folks didn’t let white folks vote?
Socrates: That’s exactly what I’m saying. You could argue that the country was founded on voter suppression from the jump!
The Barbershop: How’s that?
Socrates: Everybody assumes something that’s not true, that citizenship gives you an inherent right to vote. Think about this a minute. In 1789, at the founding of the country, all white men where citizens, but all white men could not vote.
The right to vote was granted to qualified citizens once they have reached voting age. What constitutes voting age, and what a qualified citizen is, depends on the government’s decision. There is nothing in the Constitution that defines that.
The 15th Amendment “gave” Black men the right to vote, but here is what it actually says, “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”
See it really doesn’t say you have a right to vote, but that the federal and state governments cannot deny the right to vote based on race.
The same is true of the 19th Amendment that “gave” women the right to vote. Here is what it actually says, “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”
It didn’t happen until 1920 – 132 years after the Constitution was ratified.
Let me tell you about a Supreme Court case you’ve probably never heard of called Minor v Happersett (1877). It happened right here in St. Louis County. Mrs. Minor tried to register to vote based on being a US citizen and she was denied. She took her case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court held that, while women are no less citizens than men, citizenship does not confer a right to vote, and therefore State laws barring women from voting are constitutional. It was a unanimous decision.
Here’s a quote from the decision, “…the Constitution the United States does not confer the right of suffrage upon anyone.”
Another example happened in Pennsylvania. Black men who were free and owned property did not have the right to vote in the late 1830s. A state legislator explained that “The people of this state are for continuing this commonwealth, what it has always been, a political community of white persons.”
The Barbershop: Damn, so we got nothing coming! We keep asking. ‘where’s our seat at the table?’ and white folks keep telling us ‘You ain’t got one’ or do everything they can to stop us from getting one? I’m starting to understand why!
The Barbershop: So how did poor white men get included in the rich white man’s mix? And when they did get the right to vote, why didn’t they change things to benefit themselves, since there are more poor white men than rich white men?
Socrates: There’s a political adage that says, “it’s better to have people in the tent whizzing out, than outside the tent whizzing in. So, the political problem was, ‘how do rich white folks politically manage average and poor white folks?’
To understand how they got poor white men to drink the Kool-Aid and sell out their own economic interests, I need to introduce you to Sen. John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, who also served as vice president from 1825-1832.
Calhoun is as influential in American political thought as Thomas Jefferson, James Madison or Alexander Hamilton. He was an avowed racist and among the most ardent advocates for slavery. He was also a brilliant political thinker and theorist and provided the intellectual framework for the South’s positions on slavery and succession.
In August of 1849, he gave a speech in the U.S. Senate on race and class that provided the psychological and political rationale that explains everything about how white people in America understand what it means to be white in America.
“With us, the two great divisions of society are not the rich and the poor, but white and black, and all the former, the poor as well as the rich, belong to the upper class, and are respected and treated as equals, if honest and industrious, and hence have a position and pride of character of which neither poverty nor misfortune can deprive them.”
Average and low-income white people actually believe they’re part of a white American aristocracy. W.E.B Du Bois argues that whiteness serves as a “public and psychological wage,” delivering to poor whites a valuable social status derived from their classification as “not-Black.”
Socrates: With this background, we can now deal with your original question; What’s behind this current wave of Black voter suppression.
I’ll be back. Don’t worry.