Bryan Stevenson, the director of the Equal Justice Initiative and Professor of Law at NYU, published Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption in 2014. In this New York Times Bestseller, Stevenson recounts his experience as a young attorney representing a black man that had been sentenced to death in Alabama for a crime that he did not commit. Throughout this narrative, Stevenson also examines how the criminal justice system at large, and the death penalty, in particular, disproportionately targets, punishes, and murders African Americans. After taking this class, my reading of this book has become that much more eye-opening. Until this class, I did not fully grasp the full extent of the American government’s investment in the maintenance and codification of white supremacy. For example, Stevenson points to voting data as it has to do with disenfranchised felons; “Twelve states permanently disenfranchise all or some felony offenders. Thirty-five prohibit parolees from voting, and thirty-one prohibit those on probation from voting”. As a result, “in Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee more than 10 percent of African Americans cannot vote. In Florida, Kentucky, and Virginia, more than one in five African Americans cannot vote”. These data make apparent the fact that not only are the federal and state governments complicit in the disenfranchisement of black voters but that they are active participants in the process.
In addition to the disenfranchisement that occurs through the criminal justice system, certain state governments have taken to employing even more underhanded techniques in order to prevent the voices of black individuals and communities from being heard at the polls. Race-based gerrymandering, the process through which state legislatures draw voting districts along racial lines in order to obtain a partisan advantage, has become a major political talking point over the past several years. Perhaps the most egregious example of this came from the state of North Carolina. In 2011, the Republican-controlled General Assembly redrew the lines of two districts to dilute the power of black voters. Thankfully voters sued the state in order to correct the unfairly drawn lines. The case was appealed all the way up to the Supreme Court, and with a 5-3 majority (the case was decided before Justice Gorsuch was confirmed to the bench), the Court ordered North Carolina to return to a more fairly drawn district map.
All of this is to say that our understanding of the manifestations of white supremacy must be expanded beyond the “Shrek” theory of racism. For the most part, the lasting effects of the racial hierarchy established during the founding of our nation do not reveal themselves through individuals deciding to discriminate on any given day. But rather, they reveal themselves through the structural codification and state sponsorship of discriminatory policies. I see voting rights as one of the premier manifestations of these policies.
Pledged: Nick DeMaris
WC: 504
Sources cited:
Stevenson, Bryan. Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption. New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2014.
Newkirk, Van R. “The Supreme Court Finds North Carolina’s Racial Gerrymandering Unconstitutional.” The Atlantic. May 22, 2017.
Nick, your analysis of the presence of gerrymandering in politics and its effect on minority voters is important work. It helps individuals understand racism as a systematic issue in the US rather than from ambiguous origins. Gerrymandering is a hindrance to free, fair and open elections. It is important to recognize the effect of race on our political system and hold the government to its democratic values.
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