For Left, Symbols More Important than Substance

Bigotry Beneath the Fog

By Eugene Robinson
Friday, June 23, 2006; Page A25

Once in a while the fog machine that's kept on "high" around here to obscure everyone's real intentions breaks down. There's always a mad rush to crank it up again, but for the briefest moment we can see our elected representatives for what they really are, not what they pretend to be. Wednesday we had one of those rare high-definition moments, when the House Republican caucus defied its leaders and refused to back renewal of the Voting Rights Act.

That tells you about all you need to know, doesn't it?

Speaker Dennis Hastert was ready to move forward with a feel-good, election-year extension of the landmark 1965 act that guaranteed voting rights for African Americans disenfranchised by Jim Crow law and custom in Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Louisiana, South Carolina and Virginia. In 1975 the act was expanded to cover Alaska, Texas and Arizona, where citizens with limited command of English -- Latinos, mostly -- were being treated as if they were black folks in the South.

Hastert understood that reauthorizing the act would be useful in efforts to convince voters that the Republican Party as presently constituted is just ultraconservative, not actually racist. But Hastert was sandbagged by fellow Republicans who rebelled in a private caucus meeting Wednesday. The renewal probably could have won easy approval on the House floor, since Democrats would have voted for it, but Hastert's policy is to not bring out any bill that lacks majority support from Republicans, so he had no choice but to yank it.

So much for the erstwhile "party of Lincoln."

In what was described as a contentious caucus meeting, Southern Republicans complained that their states were being singled out by the act, which was originally intended to do away with the poll taxes, literacy tests and other measures that were used to deprive black voters of their rights during the Jim Crow era. Having grown up in South Carolina during the "last throes" (to quote Dick Cheney in another context) of racial segregation, I can testify that the states in question went far out of their way to earn the enhanced scrutiny the Voting Rights Act forces them to endure.

Mr. Robinson inadvertently states the truth in arguing for his own version of bigotry. Mr. Robinson describes renewal of the Voting Rights Act as "a feel-good, election-year extension." So even though he admits that the law serves no purpose other than pandering to the Black and Hispanic communities, it should be enacted. Why? Why should Congress spend time passing laws which serve no purpose other than pandering to the feelings of one segment of our population? Laws should serve a purpose, have meaning, not simply stand as a symbol. Once again we are treated to the Democrat and Leftist principles of governing-symbol is more important than substance.

There are no "literacy tests" anymore, and haven't been for several decades. There are no "poll taxes" and haven't been for several decades.

The only purpose of this issue is to continue to punish the 7 Southern states for their past actions; actions I might add which occurred under Democrat Party control. It is a law which perpetuates the myth that people of the South are less than equal to those in the rest of the nation.

If this law is such a wonderful idea, wouldn't it be more appropriate to rewrite the law to include all 50 states? What's wrong with that idea? Is it possible that this would insult the feelings of the elitists of the Northeastern Liberal Biggots?

These inbred Brahmans in Boston and smug self-congratulating citizens of the "Big Apple" believe themselves to be better than us poor ole rednecks down here in the South. Funny thing, how many of them send their children to public schools? How many of their close friends are Black or Hispanic?

This law is directly aimed at perpetuating a myth that people in the South can't be trusted and that people in the North aren't biggoted. What a joke. Doesn't anyone recall the riots in South Boston when integration, which had largely been imposed on schools in the South for years, was attempted with their schools? But of course that's different-how I don't know-but it is...in their minds.

By the way, the first time I heard the "N" word in casual conversation was after my family and I moved from Houston, Texas to Morristown, New Jersey. While I lived in the "biggoted" South, that word was never used in polite conversation. Had I used that word in our house in Houston or in Shreveport, La. prior to that, I would have had "the tar whipped out" of me.

So much for the myth of the "biggoted South."

Laws which are largely symbolic have no place in our society.

Full Story: Mr. Robinson's Biggotry Against the South

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