Michael Harriot Profile picture
Jan 24, 2022 16 tweets 9 min read Read on X
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.”

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More from @michaelharriot

Oct 30
My uncle’s friend Hawk was a feared gangsta. He was ruthless but he was also a chess wizard. According to the streets, Hawk only lost 1 once, years ago, when he was in prison.

So imagine my surprise when my uncle told Hawk: “l bet $100 my nephew will kick your ass

A thread
Now I was like 12 or 13, so even though I was a chess prodigy, I was scared AF

What if I put Hawk in check and he slit my throat ? What if he sicced his goons on me to keep his streak alive? I hadn’t even reached goon-fighting age!

Then my uncle made a deal:
If I beat Hawk, I could keep the money.

A whole $100 dollars? Oh, hell yeah! I was down.

There was just one other problem with my uncle’s plan.

I had never actually played a chess match.

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Oct 17
One of my former economics students recently reminded me about a concept I used to call "belief economics."

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A thread:
My "Race as an Economic Construct" class applied economic principles as a framework for understanding the concept of race.

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Even money.
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Oct 2
While other organizations (hopefully, maybe) will be fact-checking, JD Vance & Tim Walz, as usual, I’ll be translating the dog whistles, white lies and overall Caucasity

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She opened a fentanyl shipping company

She helped organize a human trafficking ring

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Sep 25
From now until the general election, my weekly “Downballot” series will explore lesser-known races on the 2024 ballot

This first 1 might be the greatest story in politics. It has everything:

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A thread:
First, we must understand that this race takes place in one of the Blackest, poorest, most disenfranchised congressional districts in the country —Alabama’s 2nd district

It is a perfect example of the MOST COMMON voter suppression strategy:

Racial gerrymandering
This is the OLD Alabama 2nd congressional district. The boundaries do not follow geographic or political boundaries. It was SPECIFICALLY drawn to reduce Black voting power.

But because of population changes, the AL legislature had redraw its congressional districts
Image
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Sep 20
“The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” -

Some guy who wrote the Declaration of Independence

Donald Trump:Image
“The liberty of the press is essential to the security of freedom in a state: it ought not, therefore, to be restrained in this Commonwealth.” the oldest functioning constitution in the world

Donald Trump

amp.cnn.com/cnn/2018/11/07…
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Sep 18
To me, this story has nothing to do with a missing cat or immigration or even JD Vance. It’s about something else.

A thread:
It’s not about how easy it was for people to believe a —someone has to say it —batshit crazy lady who, INSTEAD OF LOOK EVERYWHERE for her missing pet, with zero evidence, immediately jumped to:

“Well, the Haitians must’ve eaten it.”
It’s not about how many people automatically took the word of a BATSHIT CRAZY WHITE LADY with zero evidence over common sense, hundreds of Haitians and the ACTUAL EVIDENCE of city officials
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