Thread by @michaelharriot

Maybe you don’t know.

Why is “Jim Crow 2.0” an apt description for the new voting laws?

A thread

First you gotta understand how Jim Crow even started. In the election of 1876, Southern whites claimed the election was stolen. Southern states (& racist Oregon) filed lawsuits, claiming the areas where black voters cast ballots were fraudulent.

Sound familiar?

To settle the dispute, a bunch of white men got together and certified the election for Rutherford B. Hayes in exchange for allowing the South to treat black people however they wanted, with no interference…

Otherwise known as Jim Crow

They immediately began to disenfranchise black voters.

How?

First, they changed the laws.

It’s important to know that Jim Crow laws didn’t say: “Black people can’t vote” but they were structured to keep Black people from voting

Look at what happened in Louisiana:

You gotta remember how many black folks were in these states. In some states, they outnumbered the whites. And in many cases, they outvoted them.

You also gotta remember how racists there were EVERYWHERE (remember, Jim Crow started in states like NY & Massachusetts)

This was AFTER they massacred Black folks for voting during reconstruction. Black folks STILL voted. La.’s new law had a literacy test and property requirements…unless you were born before Jan 1, 1867

It was probably just a coincidence that the date excluded all ex-slaves

But what about all the illiterate poor whites?

Well, if they were born before Jan 1 1867, their children & grandchildren were good.

This where the term “grandfather clause” came from

Georgia now is considering eliminating dropboxes but guess who can turn in absentee ballots?

And literacy tests weren’t necessarily about literacy, it was about keeping immigrants and Blacks from voting. But it was also a way for a poll worker to just disqualify a Black voters.

But there are no more literacy tests, right?

They also stationed law enforcement officers at polls to intimidate Black voters with violence and the threat of arrest.

They wouldn’t do that today, though.

It wasn’t always police officers. Sometimes it was regular regular white people acting as “poll watchers” intimidating and arresting and detaining black voters.

Texas’ new voter law literally does the exact same thing

Sometimes, Black voters said: “Maybe if I vote absentee ballot, they won’t know I’m black.”

But in places like Harris County, TX, upholders of Jim Crow just denied Black voters’ absentee ballot requests up until CF Richardson sued in 1938

It’s different now, though.

Oh wait…

And of course, sometimes Jim Crow areas would just replace entire election boards with people who they knew would make every effort to toss Black voters.

Jim Crow 2.0 though? It’s 2022!

Will someone please tell the state of Georgia?

And just like Jim Crow, most of these “colorblind” voting laws were passed under the guise of “ballot security,” claiming they were protecting the integrity of elections.

There’s just one problem: the people writing these laws have filed lawsuits, held independent recounts, state sponsored recounts & used every measure to prove voter fraud is going.

No one could find any fraud or security problems. Because there isn’t any.

Well, there’s one.

The only logical reason for these new laws is that white people are VERY insecure. That’s why they’re resorting to these new laws.

Usually (even when Obama won), more whites than Blacks trusted the vote count. But in 2020, for the first time, more whites distrusted the vote

And there is no doubt the laws will disproportionately affect nonwhite voters. The data proves it. History shows it. That’s their intent. But I actually wouldn’t call it “Jim Crow 2.0”

A 2nd-generation version is usually an improvement.

This is “Factory Refurbished Jim Crow.”