By Dr. Marcus Anthony Hunter | Word In Black
(WIB) – An untrue hierarchy of human value has long organized our experience as a nation. This false belief in human hierarchy promotes preferences in worthiness, including who gets access to education, housing, healthcare, wealth accumulation, and fundamental civil rights.
The right to vote, integral to democracy, was then weaponized as a tool to reinforce this hierarchy of human value. Those deemed worthy were given an unimpeded right to vote. Those deemed unworthy — at least by a white patriarchal power structure — were denied the right to vote.
The right to vote then was a sledgehammer used to cement power among a few, at the expense of everyone else — namely Black people, women, other people of color, and persons in poverty.
Black communities have always shown resilience in their fight for the ballot box.
Indeed, the Civil Rights Movement was about opening the door of opportunity, as evidenced by access to the right to vote and the right to live with dignity. Despite the relentless barriers, Black communities have always shown resilience in their fight for the ballot box. The white patriarchal power structure’s struggle to share power and the right to vote has been met with unwavering determination employing cruel tactics from the era of racial terror lynchings to the imposition of poll taxes and literacy tests, to the ongoing harassment and debasement.
This history of cruelty and dehumanization is critical as the right to vote influences everything from the services available to our communities to the people who represent us. While our foremothers and forefathers organized and struggled for the right to vote, the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA) was one battle amid a series of battles for our democracy. What many didn’t realize, at least until it was much too late, was that the Voting Rights Act was under attack from the moment of its inception to the present day.
In the 1960s, savvy politicians, including proud Texan President Lyndon B. Johnson, used the passage of civil rights legislation, including the VRA, to stoke white resentment and fear. Although Black people could access the ballot box, they faced stiff backlash. At the same time, felony disenfranchisement laws gained in popularity and usage — from white citizens’ councils to resistance to integration to intimidation at the ballot box to restrictive voting laws, the right to vote for Black people has long been under siege. Such laws were part of a broader effort to chip away at who can vote and when they can vote.
The Voting Rights Act was under attack from the moment of its inception to the present day.
Today, some 4 million Americans are unable to vote due to a felony conviction. These disenfranchised citizens live in a nation with yearly elections, and yet they are barred from casting a ballot and electing candidates of their choice. Barring citizens who have served their time isn’t about making communities safer, nor is it about forcing persons who have made mistakes to atone for those misgivings. Such is part of a broader strategy to limit who can vote.
The pattern of taking steps to limit the electorate continued in the 2000s. The June 2013 Supreme Court decision in Shelby v. Holder meant that Sections 4 and 5 of the landmark legislation were no longer available for civil rights litigants to use. It also meant that states with histories of discrimination no longer had to get federal preclearance for voting rights changes. The High Court’s decision opened the floodgates in terms of restrictive voting legislation, which has had the cumulative impact of denying and abridging the right to vote for millions.
For instance, the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU found in 2023 that after the Shelby County decision, “at least 29 states passed 94 restrictive voting laws. While a few of these have been blocked by courts or repealed, most are still in effect…” As monumental as the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was, our nation needs something more. Sixty years after its passage, we should be asking ourselves what the next iteration of pro-voting policies entails. We should be advocating for polices that offer repair for decades of harm. We should also be asking what tools are at our disposal to protect the ballot today and for future generations.
Due to circumstances, we often get stuck in a cycle of defense rather than ideating on what future generations might need. If ever there was a time to do both defense and offense, that time is now.
This moment calls for creativity, coordination, and intergenerational learning.
As we mark the 60th anniversary of the VRA, we must recognize the active attacks on democracy and continued voter suppression tactics — felony disenfranchisement, gerrymandering, limited polling place resources in predominantly Black communities, polling place closures, reductions in early voting, and Sunday voting, etc. When you add to this combination of coordinated voter suppression tactics, the active resistance to the John Lewis Voting Rights Bill, the fragility of our voting rights and democracy is ever-clear.
Laws designed to silence dissent have spread fear and anxiety, even as our nation has historically built upon responding to injustice through protests. That doesn’t mean that all hope is lost. In fact, hope is more important now than ever. This moment calls for creativity, coordination, and intergenerational learning. Most of all, it calls for hope. If we believe that our best days are behind us, we are less likely to organize and struggle for the future.
Our votes are our voice.
Sixty years after its passage, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is both bedrock and a target requiring vigilance and renewed commitment to defending and ensuring voting rights for all Americans. Today, we uplift and venerate the legacy of all of the courageous people who marched from Selma to Montgomery and remind ourselves that democracy belongs to every citizen, regardless of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, background, or zip code. We must be prudent enough to remember that democracy requires voice, and our votes are our voice. Therefore, a threat to voting rights anywhere is a threat to voters everywhere.
Dr. Marcus Anthony Hunter is the Scott Waugh Endowed Chair in the Division of the Social Sciences, and Professor in the Departments of Sociology & African American Studies.