NationStates Jolt Archive


A case of racially based voting discrimination in Mississippi USA...

Daistallia 2104
14-10-2006, 14:30
... that's been turned on it's head.

The short version: the US Justice department has brought suit against the chairman of the Noxubee County Democratic Executive Committee, a mostly ethnically black county, for "relentless voting- related racial discrimination" against whites.

Well, this is an interesting departure from the norm....

Opinions and/or comments, anyone?

In U.S., voting rights cut both ways
By Adam Nossiter The New York Times

Published: October 11, 2006
MACON, Mississippi The U.S. Justice Department has chosen this no- stoplight town buried in the eastern Mississippi prairie for an unusual civil rights test: the first federal lawsuit under the Voting Rights Act accusing blacks of suppressing the rights of whites.

The action represents a sharp shift in four decades of policy, and it has raised eyebrows outside the state. The government is going after blacks for vote fraud in a state whose violent rejection of blacks' right to vote, over generations, helped give birth to the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Yet within Mississippi the case has provoked knowing nods rather than cries of outrage, even among liberal Democrats.

The Justice Department's main focus is Ike Brown, a local power broker whose imaginative electoral tactics have for 20 years caused whisperings from here to the state capital in Jackson, 100 miles, or 160 kilometers, away.

Brown is tall, thin, a twice-convicted felon, the chairman of the Noxubee County Democratic Executive Committee and its undisputed political boss. He is also accused by the federal government of orchestrating - with the help of others - "relentless voting- related racial discrimination" against whites, outnumbered by blacks by more than 3 to 1 in the county.

His goal, according to the government: keeping black politicians - ones supported by Brown, that is - in office.

To do that, the department says, he and his allies devised a watertight system for controlling the all-determining Democratic primary, much as segregationists did decades ago.

Brown is accused in the lawsuit and in court papers of paying and organizing notaries, some of whom illegally marked absentee ballots or influenced how the ballots were voted; of publishing a list of voters, all white, accompanied by a warning that they would be challenged at the polls; of importing black voters into the county; and of altering racial percentages in districts by manipulating the registration rolls.

To run against the county prosecutor - one of two white officeholders in Noxubee - Brown brought in a black lawyer from outside the county, according to court papers, who never bothered to turn on the natural gas or electricity at his rented apartment.

Whites, who make up just under 30 percent of the population of Noxubee county, are circumspect when discussing Brown, though he remains a hero to many blacks. When he drove off to a federal prison to serve a sentence for tax fraud in 1995, he received a grand farewell from his political supporters and friends, including local elected officials; whites here, on the other hand, for years have seen him as a kind of occult force in determining the affairs of the county. But many of them said privately that they welcomed the Justice Department's lawsuit, which is scheduled for trial early next year.

"In my opinion, it puts the focus on fair play," said Roderick Walker, the county prosecutor Brown tried to oust. "They were doing something wrong."

Up and down South Jefferson Street, though, in the old brick commercial district, white merchants refused to be quoted, for fear of alienating black customers. "There's a lot of voting irregularities, but that's all I'm going to say," one woman said, ending the conversation abruptly.

The Justice Department's voting rights expert is less reserved.

"Virtually every election provides a multitude of examples of these illegal activities organized by Ike Brown and other defendants, and those who act in concert with them," Theodore Arrington, chairman of the political science department at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, wrote in a report filed with the court.

Brown is coolly dismissive of the case against him. He has no office at the white-columned Noxubee County Courthouse in Macon, but that is where he casually greets visitors, sitting in a chair near the entrance. A loquacious man, he both minimizes his own role and portrays himself as a central target. Far from being the vital orchestrator portrayed by the government, "when I was in Maxwell prison in '95 and '96, the show went right on," he said.

There are so few whites in the county, Brown suggests, that the tactics alleged by the department are unnecessary to keep blacks in office.

"They can't win anyway unless we choose to vote for them," he said with a smile. "If I was doing something wrong - that's like closing the barn door when the horse is already gone."

He sees the lawsuit against him as merely the embittered reaction of disenfranchised whites, and he scoffs at a consent decree signed last year in which county officials agreed not to harass or intimidate white candidates or voters, manipulate absentee ballots or let poll workers coach voters, among other things. "I wouldn't sign my name," Brown said.

But the Justice Department is pressing ahead with its suit and wants to force Brown to agree to the same cease- and-desist conditions as his fellow county officials.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/10/11/news/vote.php
Philosopy
14-10-2006, 14:31
Racism is racism. It doesn't matter who it's directed at.
Babelistan
14-10-2006, 14:32
racism work both ways (actually in many directions)
Ny Nordland
14-10-2006, 14:34
Let's hope that this wont be the case in USA as in nation-wide when whites loose their majority in 2050s (according to US Cencus, if current trends continue)...
Ny Nordland
14-10-2006, 14:35
racism work both ways (actually in many directions)

So the whites in that town can now use "White Power" to empower themselves without being labelled Nazis?
Philosopy
14-10-2006, 14:35
Let's hope that this wont be the case in USA as in nation-wide when whites loose their majority in 2050s (according to US Cencus, if current trends continue)...
Personally, I'd prefer to hope that by time that happens, distinctions such as 'them and us' will be relegated to the dustbins of history, where they belong.
Babelistan
14-10-2006, 14:36
So the whites in that town can now use "White Power" to empower themselves without being labelled Nazis?

huh? they would probaly be labeled KKK but thats another matter
Skibereen
14-10-2006, 14:37
It's Mississippi, where hate runs deep.
I am no more surprised by that then if you were to post that dental care was sub-par in Mississippi.

This idea that White Apologists have that Blacks are not just as every bit racist as whites is is so tired and trite.
I digress.

Good for the coloreds now maybe we will see white kids sitting at lunch counters getting stomped on by colored for the way they look....oh wait.

Well now maybe we will see sentencing based on some racial marker as opposed to the crime alone, where if whites commit a crime against a black it is some how morally more reprehensible and so desrves a stiffer sentence based soley on the races of the parties involved....oh wait.

Well now maybe we will see the exposure of schools offering preferential treatment to students of minority ethinicities who under perform whites based strictly on race....oh wait.

Yawn, I am surprised these people didnt get a fecking medal.

Oppression is everywhere and it has existed throughout the history of man, i so tired of these groups WHO EVER they are claiming they are some how the first or the worst.

Get over it.

Hang them all. White, Black, whatever--just thin the herd I tire of the masses.
Babelistan
14-10-2006, 14:39
It's Mississippi, where hate runs deep.
I am no more surprised by that then if you were to post that dental care was sub-par in Mississippi.

This idea that White Apologists have that Blacks are not just as every bit racist as whites is is so tired and trite.
I digress.

Good for the coloreds now maybe we will see white kids sitting at lunch counters getting stomped on by colored for the way they look....oh wait.

Well now maybe we will see sentencing based on some racial marker as opposed to the crime alone, where if whites commit a crime against a black it is some how morally more reprehensible and so desrves a stiffer sentence based soley on the races of the parties involved....oh wait.

Well now maybe we will see the exposure of schools offering preferential treatment to students of minority ethinicities who under perform whites based strictly on race....oh wait.

Yawn, I am surprised these people didnt get a fecking medal.

Oppression is everywhere and it has existed throughout the history of man, i so tired of these groups WHO EVER they are claiming they are some how the first or the worst.

Get over it.

Hang them all. White, Black, whatever--just thin the herd I tire of the masses.

yep. agree
NERVUN
14-10-2006, 14:47
As long as there is evidence of wrongdoing, it should not matter what color are the skins of the people involved.
Demented Hamsters
14-10-2006, 16:14
why'd ya post the whole story twice?:confused:
Ice Hockey Players
14-10-2006, 17:40
Yay, so black people can be racist majoritarian assholes. It comes in all, erm, colors. I'd sit here and spout off what I think the problem is (abject poverty and an underfunded and underachieving education system, but that's beside the point) but someone's going to get it for this.
Sarkhaan
14-10-2006, 17:42
Let's hope that this wont be the case in USA as in nation-wide when whites loose their majority in 2050s (according to US Cencus, if current trends continue)...

but when that happens, there just won't be a majority group...none will be over 50%
Ny Nordland
14-10-2006, 18:16
but when that happens, there just won't be a majority group...none will be over 50%

The majority will be non-white :D
Wallonochia
14-10-2006, 18:22
A case of racially based voting discrimination in Mississippi USA...

As opposed to all of those other Mississippi's. That's one of my pet peeves because adding the USA at the end seems very redundant unless it's Georgia.
Laerod
14-10-2006, 18:26
As opposed to all of those other Mississippi's. That's one of my pet peeves because adding the USA at the end seems very redundant unless it's Georgia.Be fair. You can't expect everyone on a British server to know all 50 of the United States. ;)
Daistallia 2104
14-10-2006, 18:29
why'd ya post the whole story twice? :confused:

Heh. Didn't notice that until you mentioned it. AFAIK, it's got something to dio with the set up of the IHT's site...
Sarkhaan
14-10-2006, 18:30
The majority will be non-white :D

yes, and that is broken down into black, latino, pacific islander, asian, native american, multiracial, et. al.

"non-white" isn't a race.
Wallonochia
14-10-2006, 18:30
Be fair. You can't expect everyone on a British server to know all 50 of the United States. ;)

Being fair isn't remotely as fun.....
Upper Botswavia
14-10-2006, 18:31
The majority will be non-white :D

So you are assuming that all the people with a skin color other than white are sitting around rubbing their hands together and plotting about the day when they can all get together and gang up on the white people who will number less than 50% of the population???

The point of the previous post is that there will be no one majority group. Which will be a good thing, putting us all on a more even footing. Maybe then even you will be able to see that this "us against them" thing is outdated and wrong. Skin color makes no difference, we are all just people.
Ny Nordland
14-10-2006, 18:45
So you are assuming that all the people with a skin color other than white are sitting around rubbing their hands together and plotting about the day when they can all get together and gang up on the white people who will number less than 50% of the population???

The point of the previous post is that there will be no one majority group. Which will be a good thing, putting us all on a more even footing. Maybe then even you will be able to see that this "us against them" thing is outdated and wrong. Skin color makes no difference, we are all just people.

Similarly, we are all just molecules. Celebrate your brotherhood with vibrators. :D
Free Randomers
14-10-2006, 18:45
Opinions and/or comments, anyone?



You do not have to be white to be a racist bigot.
Azaea
14-10-2006, 18:53
It's Mississippi, where hate runs deep.
I am no more surprised by that then if you were to post that dental care was sub-par in Mississippi.

This idea that White Apologists have that Blacks are not just as every bit racist as whites is is so tired and trite.
I digress.

Good for the coloreds now maybe we will see white kids sitting at lunch counters getting stomped on by colored for the way they look....oh wait.

Well now maybe we will see sentencing based on some racial marker as opposed to the crime alone, where if whites commit a crime against a black it is some how morally more reprehensible and so desrves a stiffer sentence based soley on the races of the parties involved....oh wait.

Well now maybe we will see the exposure of schools offering preferential treatment to students of minority ethinicities who under perform whites based strictly on race....oh wait.

Yawn, I am surprised these people didnt get a fecking medal.

Oppression is everywhere and it has existed throughout the history of man, i so tired of these groups WHO EVER they are claiming they are some how the first or the worst.

Get over it.

Hang them all. White, Black, whatever--just thin the herd I tire of the masses.

Let me get this straight: you think that we're all a bunch of racist assholes here? Have you even ever been to Mississippi? I don't know one white person who is (atleast openly) racist. The same goes for black people. Racism is racism, it doesn't matter weather you act on it, even just saying things in a racist manner makes you a racist. But, I don't see much of that, and I live here. Of course, I live two counties down from Noxubee. But it can't be that different...
Sarkhaan
14-10-2006, 19:09
Let me get this straight: you think that we're all a bunch of racist assholes here? Have you even ever been to Mississippi? I don't know one white person who is (atleast openly) racist. The same goes for black people. Racism is racism, it doesn't matter weather you act on it, even just saying things in a racist manner makes you a racist. But, I don't see much of that, and I live here. Of course, I live two counties down from Noxubee. But it can't be that different...

racist assholes with bad teeth, it would seem...
Ice Hockey Players
14-10-2006, 19:13
Similarly, we are all just molecules. Celebrate your brotherhood with vibrators. :D

I have a cell phone I can set to vibrate; will that work for you?