And lets remember that Jim Crow is alive and well in the south still. Whites want to keep the power they've wrested from blacks and need all the allies they can muster for their fight.
That can't be. I have it on the good authority of several posters here that systemic racism is dead and buried.
Southern white supremacy continues to be the most influential dynamic in southern politics today. The disenfranchisement of black voters like we see in Georgia and Texas is no different than what happened in the decades after the civil war. The posters who claim otherwise are members of the Long Live Jim Crow Society.
It's really not as bad as the media tells you. Every one of my Black friends and acquaintances have voted in most every election without any difficulty. If they live in Fulton or Dekalb counties, it does take more patience as the lines are much longer than in my county. But, despite all of recent changes in voting, anyone can still request an absentee ballot without a reason, which isn't the case in every state. We still have 3 full weeks of early voting, but too many people don't take advantage of that.
Imo, the biggest problem in Georgia has been voter apathy. One of my Black friends finally convinced her two middle aged children to vote in 2020 for the first time in their lives. She isn't sure if they will vote again. Before I retired, I worked with many young Black women, but very few of them ever voted. I helped two register when Obama ran for president, but one of them "forgot" to vote in the midterms. Others were totally disinterested in voting. My city is slightly Black majority so I have had the opportunity to discuss politics and voting with quite a few Black folks. I think most of the older ones vote all of the time, but for some reason that I don't completely understand, the younger folks, both Black and White aren't all that interested in voting. Voter suppression combined with voter apathy hurt the Democrats.
Poor White folks aren't very reliable voters either. I've worked with many who never voted and had no interest in doing so. Imo, Stacey Abrams changed that to some extent. She is a brilliant, highly motivated politician who has certainly helped get out the vote. The Republicans in Georgia are scared shitless of her. They know she is powerful and influential. They've already started at least one anti-Stacey organization. They try to demonize her at every opportunity. These are some of the same people who admired her when she was the minority leader in the Georgia Congress. Now, that she's become so powerful, she is suddenly a commie or something along those lines. The truth is, she is a pragmatic progressive who understands that compromise is the only way to make progress. It's not as much about race as it is about maintaining their power, when it comes to Republicans. They know that about 95% of Black Georgians vote for Democrats, so they are easy targets. Calling the current situation "Jim Crow" is way over the top. I visited the South once as a child in the 50s. I've seen Jim Crow for myself. We are far removed from those days, despite the current increase in racism, inspired by the former president and his allies. Considering that our neighborhoods are far more integrated than they were 10 years ago, it will be harder for Republicans to target certain areas based on race. I do a little happy dance every time I have a new Black neighbor. The more integrated we become, the harder it will be to gerrymander based on race. Plus to be honest, my Black neighbors tend to be much nicer than my White neighbors.
The systemic racism that I see isn't limited to the South. Systemic racism is a country wide problem. It's just that a lot of people from other areas of the country refuse to see what's happening in their own cities and states.
