The Metamorphosis of Racism: In Deep Denial, But Still as Prevalent as Ever
In many ways, racism has gone through metamorphosis.
In the 1960s, racism and oppression appeared in more overt ways.
However, in the 21st century many racists have convinced themselves that they do not harbor racist feelings, while their actions show just as much racism as the actions of White supremacists in the 20th century and 19th century.
The metamorphosis of racists now appears friendly and may not refer to Black people as racial slurs (at least publicly).
They may even profess to have Black friends and like some Black athletes and entertainers.
In actuality, racists have used that as an excuse as to why they cannot possibly harbor racist feelings for many decades.
However, those same people are trying like hell to suppress the Black vote, and maintain White control of the American political structure.
That reality is crystal clear in the state of Georgia where the Black female Democrat Stacey Abrams vying for governor is running neck and neck with her White male GOP counterpart, Brian Kemp, who also currently serves as Georgia’s secretary of state.
The state of Georgia recently enacted “exact-match” legislation, which will make it more difficult for residents to vote if their identification cards and voter registration cards do not exactly match.
That means, if there is a misspelling or punctuation out of place on a voter registration card and it does not match a voter’s identification, they can be disenfranchised.
The dictionary defines disenfranchisement as depriving someone of the right to vote.
This exact-match law will definitely adversely affect Black voters disproportionately because stereotypically many Black residents have creative names that can easily be misspelled or entered incorrectly into the state voter rolls.
Abrams said, “We have known since 2016 that the exact-match system has a disproportionate effect on people of color and women.”
As a result of the exact-match law, 53,000 Georgia voter registration applications have been placed on hold.
Of that 53,000, 70 percent of the applicants are Black.
“It’s part of a pattern of behavior where (Kemp) tries to tilt the playing field in his favor or in the favor of his party,” Abrams said.
As expected, Kemp denied all of Abrams’ allegations.
The Georgia secretary of state said that one of the reasons that so many minority voter registration applications remain on hold stems from the fact that many came from a voter registration drive targeting minorities called The New Georgia Project, which Abrams founded.
“Kemp is fighting to protect the integrity of our elections and ensure that only legal citizens cast a ballot,” said Ryan Mahoney, Kemp’s campaign spokesperson.
However, why is it that all of the initiatives to protect voter integrity seem to only adverse affect minority communities?
Kemp is not trying to fight to protect the integrity of the vote as his campaign manager asserted.
He is the secretary of state in Georgia.
As a part of his duties, he controls the voter rolls in Georgia.
So not only are his actions blatantly racist and politically motivated, they are also the definition of a conflict of interest.
Everything that the GOP has tried over the last decade to fix voter fraud, which barely exists, tends to only negatively affect, Black, brown, poor and women voters.
And now that national political pundits have weighed in on the exact-match scandal in Georgia, GOP lawmakers from within Georgia have started calling people from outside the Peach State, “outside agitators.”
The term outside agitators is the exact-match or exact-term that many racists and White supremacists used to describe civil rights workers in the 1960s that only wanted equal rights for all Americans, not just White men.
A new term that racists use when people fight for equality is race baiting.
Anyone that uses the terms race baiter or outside agitator should immediately get labeled as extremely racist.
Racists have always done their best to pretend that they do not despise people because of the color of their skin.
However, if people pay attention to those aforementioned code words, what they really mean becomes evident.
And those code words have been similar since the 1950s and 1960s when racism appeared in more overt ways than it does in 2018.
Actually, if people pay attention, they will see that not much has changed racially since the turbulent 1960s.
Racists just think that they are better thespians than they really are.
Many racists believe they can fool people if they only use terms that they think are not racist.
But no racist in politics is as talented an actor or actress as they think they are.
Whether it is identification laws, voter purge laws, exact-match laws or stripping someone of their right to vote if they are convicted of crime, the goal is the same.
The goal is to strip minorities of the right to vote without saying they are taking away minorities’ right to vote so as not to appear racist.
Basically, many in the Republican Party are saying n******, we are stripping away all of your rights and taking our country back.
That is one of the reasons why President Donald Trump won an election he was not remotely qualified for.
Some voters basically said an inexperienced an unqualified White man in the Oval Office is better than a n***** in the Oval Office.
The goal to stop minority gains is the reason why some White men now think they are being discriminated against because they enjoy less White privilege than in the past.
Equality for minorities and women now looks like discrimination to some White men because they were probably erroneously taught America was their country to control, not a country to be shared with all Americans, regardless of race, creed or sex.
Therefore, even though very few if any, will ever admit to being a racist, taking away the rights of people because of their race is beyond racist no matter how hard someone tries to pretend that they are not racist.
Unfortunately, no one can stop racism or totally stop the attempt to suppress the minority vote.
But those denied the right to vote because their name on voter rolls versus their identification does not totally match can demand a provisional ballot because that is their right as an American to have their vote taken.
But that provisional ballot should provide all sane Americans with the evidence that shows not much has changed in the 50 years since the Civil Rights Movement in regards to true equality for Black people in America.
