The Pros And Cons Of African American Voting

Even after the passing of the Fifteenth Amendment, African Americans were “disenfranchised in the South by intimidation and electoral trickery, including whites-only primaries, rigged literacy tests, and poll taxes” (Patterson 2011, p. 180). The Freedom Riders rode through the South, enduring harassment and imprisonment to encourage other African Americans to vote. Voter turnout in African American communities is greatly encouraged. Personally, coming from an African American family, I was strongly encouraged by my parents and grandparents to vote when I was of legal age. My family instilled the importance of voting in me at a very young age. Although voter turnout among African Americans is still fairly low, in the 2008 presidential election African Americans had the second highest voter turnout, behind non-Hispanic Caucasians (African Americans, n.d.). Race can influence voter turnout because with African Americans specifically, although rates are getting better, they are still not high.

The right to vote for African American became difficult during the time because the northern didn’t want to consider the blacks as equal to the society. As Frederick Douglass, has once stated “Slavery is not abolished until the black man has the ballot.” African American fought their way to gain their right to vote is by coming together, free blacks and emancipated slaves, to create parades, petition drives to demand, and to organize their own “freedom ballots.” As a free African American, they except the same respect as the whites and nothing

I have come to a realization that the United States of America has taken a huge step back into history. Instead of learning from our past and growing we have elected a President that only brings racist remarks symbolizing everything that the United States does not identify as. Due to the election it has brought us much awareness of how ignorant the people who were elected into office to be the people's voice. We have accomplished many things as a society, but still render the key elements to take the blindfold of the ignorance that hovers around people. The Voting Rights act has been dismantled and sadly, we are returning to our racists background, or maybe we just never acknowledged them until we elected a blatant racist president. The Voting Right’s act represents a huge faze in our History of how we transformed into a more welcoming society for all people no

“I gave a little blood on that bridge in Selma, Alabama for the right to vote. I’m not going to stand by and let the Supreme Court take the right to vote away from us [African Americans]” –John Lewis. Within 100 years, African Americans overcame many obstacles such as paying poll taxes, passing multiple tests, and violence to be able to vote. They had to pay taxes, such as poll taxes. They also had to pass multiple tests, such as the Property and Literacy tests. Violence was also an obstacle African Americans had to face in order to vote.

The African-American community is comprised of 34 million people, and makes up approximately 12.8 percent of the American population (Barker, Jones, Tate 1999: 3). As such, it is the largest minority group in the United States. Yet, politically, the black community has never been able to sufficiently capitalize on that status in order to receive the full benefits of life in America. Today, African-Americans, hold less than 2 percent of the total number of elected positions in this country (Tate, 1994: 3) and the number of members within the community that actually partake in voting continues to drop. In spite of these statistics, as of 1984, a telephone survey found that 70

contemporary world of today Americans are said to be living in the most equal nation, one where its citizens are entitled to a variety of inalienable rights, one in particular being the right to vote. However this was not always the case. From the times of the late Malcolm X, we have not made much progress in our voting affairs. We have the choice and ability to vote, but are we as a people (the black community) utilizing these rights to the utmost? Have we been using our votes to our advantage, or making use of our votes at all? Statistics and I say no. We did not always have choice or say in how things were governed and now that we do, I would hope to see all Black Americans jumping at the chance to be a part of the decision making. Think back to not even a half century ago when this privilege was not ours, and there were many a people ready to give up all they had, their lives and more for it. Malcolm X the revolutionary in his struggle for freedom stressed the importance of Voting. He emphasized the power of the vote and the importance of being granted the right of voting, and even now not as many as need be are making use of their vote.

It was a horrifying time for African Americans in the south dealing with huge obstacles to having the freedom of voting, as well as poll taxes, literacy tests, and many other limitations to having the righteous to vote.

Following the Civil War and freeing of slaves all over America a new question arose: Should black people be able to vote? Further, were they even citizens in the fullest sense? Now freed from slavery, black Americans found themselves in a political limbo where they were no longer property but not fully citizens. In an effort to extend protection from discrimination at the poll booth, an amendment to the Constitution was passed declaring it unlawful to deny voting on account of race. This amendment, however, was met with unprecedented resistance. Suppression of the black vote was just one step in preventing black Americans from being treated as citizens.

First off, African Americans in the North were not free because they had little to none political right. For example, document A shows that 6 of 16 states in the North were not allowed to vote. 5 of the 16 were allowed to vote while the other 5 had restricted voting. The majority of the states was not allowed to vote and those that were had many restrictions of voting. Notice the 5 states that are allowed to vote: Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont, are states with a small population of African Americans. This way the white population still outnumbers the blacks. So when African Americans vote,

Up until the year 1870 African Americans could not vote in any election in American. (U.S. Voting Rights). In the past America has been making a lot of changes in our voting system’s equality. In the present, legally African Americans have the same rights as a white man does. In the future the rights will not get any better or worse. Throughout history The African American voting rights have improved to the present day and will stay the same in the near future.

     Black Americans of today need to register to vote and make use of their voting rights if they want to see a change to the current state of democracy. In the

African-Americans may sometimes wonder at the contradictory facts about their history presented in many standard history texts. These texts state that blacks were given the right to vote in 1870, yet the same texts will acknowledge that this right did not really exist for African-Americans until the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.

Places with sizable black minorities continue to show racial gerrymandering thwarting African Americans from reaching such efforts. Racial gerrymandering is the power that limited African Americans the right to vote. The hegemonic believe that states had over the voting polls whites had more voting rights than blacks which shifted from one winning to the other. “In the 2004 election, the last before the law was reauthorized, the black registration rate in Mississippi was 76 percent… in 2012… African American voter’s turnout exceeded the white voters in five of the six states originally covered by section 5” (Liptak 61). Given this after the Voting Rights Act was passed all these milestones would be a waste. Most of the states percentage of

America has been built on the idea that as citizens, we have the choice to decide what is the best for our country. Millions of Americans cast their vote every election day to make sure their voices are heard on who is going to run their country and what new policies they will bring with them. As stated in Anny Shin’s article, “Takoma Park 16-year-old savors his history-making moment at the polls,” voting is a, “valuable privilege,” in which many don’t realize. In the United States, not every is allowed to vote, only 18-year old citizens are allowed to vote. However the number of 18-year olds voting is very low and this has been an issue in the political for quite a while. The concerns and desires of most millennials are not being expressed as many are not voting. Many, like the city of Takoma have proposed to allow 16 and 17-year olds to vote as they believe that voting among millennials will increase.

Historically in America, voting has been a relatively discriminatory practice. It has limited and deprived many individuals of many diverse races, ethnicities, and walks of life from casting their votes to select the individual who they feel is most educated, and skilled to represent their interests. Not only has this been proven to be wrong by discriminating minority groups in voting, it also has proved to be a process, which minimizes the largest growing demographics in the country. Furthermore, with millennials growing to become more politically active, minority groups are becoming more politically involved than ever. Taking this into account an important question that is raised by the author William Eskridge in his book “Legislation and Statutory Interpretation” is “Would minorities be better off with more representatives who had to pay attention to their interests because they are a powerful and organized constituency, rather than with a few representatives of minority districts who specialize in protecting only their interests?” (Eskridge,Frickley,& Garrett, 2006, pp.55).