Is the Voting Rights Act a Smokescreen?
Written By: Ralph Conner Published In: New Coalition News & Views Publication Date: October 1, 2005 Publisher: The New Coalition for Economic & Social Change In 2007, several provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 will expire. Already, a movement is afoot to use the coming debate as a way to deny progress in race relations and ignore the real problem: low black voter turnout. As a former elected official for a primarily African-American inner-ring suburb of Chicago, I can attest that driving more voters–black, white, or otherwise–to the polls can make a difference in any election. Low voter turnout is a serious concern in many elections across the U.S. But no serious progress will be made to address that concern if the discussion is muddied by claims America is about to “turn back the clock” to the days of Jim Crow, when blacks could not vote in some areas of the country. Yet that is exactly the approach proposed by some civil rights luminaries at the NAACP convention earlier th
