This One Ties Together A Number Of Things Frequently Covered Here

I'm only quoting the end of this piece by Joe McNally about his family's trip south on a Civil Rights historical tour. It's worth reading the whole thing.

Photo IDs replace dogs, hoses in push to nix rights
By Joel McNally
April 30, 2005

Republicans in Madison who are trying to throw up obstacles to disenfranchise minorities would not like to think of themselves as modern-day versions of the illiterate thugs who blew up black churches and murdered civil rights workers in the '50s and '60s.

For the most part, they may not be motivated by explicit racism. They are merely seeking petty political advantage (emphasis added). The end justifies the means just as it did four years ago when Florida officials blocked every minority vote they could to put into office a president who came in second nationally.

At the very least, Republicans who seek to add requirements to make voting more difficult for African Americans and Latinos display a callous lack of regard for the monumental struggle and the lives that were lost to win the vote for racial minorities.

They're as willfully ignorant as the grande dame of Birmingham in a CBS-TV documentary from the '50s re-broadcast in one of the civil rights museums we visited.

Denying racial prejudice in Birmingham, the society matron proudly noted a black school child had won a citywide art contest. Of course, by law, the black child wasn't allowed into the public library to see the display of his winning entry.

All it took was a couple of phone calls from the important woman to get special permission for the black child and his family to enter the library after hours to view the honor bestowed upon his work. If requiring photo IDs doesn't turn away enough minority voters, we can always go back to the dogs and fire hoses.

Perhaps it's splitting hairs, but I'll part company from Joe ever so slightly. Though I think he is absolutely correct about the pragmatics of Republican voter suppression tactics, I believe the engineers of disenfranchisement also understand the wider effects of their local acts of suppression. Even when disenfranchisement laws are shot down and voter challengers are barred from the polls, continuous airing and consideration of bogus Republican claims about fraudulent voters have a desired effect. The voters in question are sent the message that powerful members of our society don't think they deserve the basic rights of American citizens. Pragmatic tactics to keep Democratic voters from the polls are also intended to reinforce feelings of exclusion and suppress the political will of low-income people and people of color.