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Clarence Page: Why Black voting rights matter
When the 1965 Voting Rights Act was passed, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Clarence Page had just finished high school.
This legislation changed the lives of Black people in America because Jim Crow laws had virtually prevented Blacks from voting in the South with impossible poll questions and literacy tests, he said in an interview with Ian Bremmer on GZERO World.
But the Supreme Court gutted the law in 2013, allowing states to pass new voting legislation that progressives say restricts Black access to the ballot box.
The 2022 midterm elections will be the first major test of these laws — which Democrats in Congress are unlikely to be able to stop. How will this all affect Black turnout in November?
Page explains that if Trump loyalists win in key states, their legislatures — not voters — may end up deciding the next US presidential race.
What may happen in 2024 reminds him of 1876, when the end of Reconstruction after the Civil War, along with a disputed presidential election, ushered in the Jim Crow laws that ended ability to vote in Alabama.
Page asks, “Are we going to get rid of these last vestiges of discrimination from the Jim Crow era?"
Critical race theory and Black voting rights
Did conservative backlash against critical race theory influence Republican-led US states to pass new voting laws restricting Black Americans' access to the ballot box?
Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Clarence Page thinks so, to a certain extent, he tells Ian Bremmer on GZERO World.
Anything that looks like Black history or that makes white children feel bad, he says, has been inaccurately labeled as critical race theory and presented as a danger, motivating a lot of voters to get rid of it — for instance through voter suppression.
For Page, it's ironic that some in the party of Abraham Lincoln are now fighting those old Civil War battles again as far as democracy is concerned.
Watch this episode of GZERO World with Ian Bremmer: Black voter suppression in 2022
Podcast: It’s getting harder for Black Americans to vote, warns journalist Clarence Page
Listen: Voter suppression is a front and center issue. But it’s not always black and white…or red and blue. Black voters continue to turn out in smaller numbers than white voters. How much of that is due to conscious efforts to make voting harder? Pulitzer Prize-winning Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page joins Ian Bremmer on the GZERO World podcast to discuss the past and future of the struggle for Black voting rights in America. Page warns that if Trump loyalists win in key states, their legislatures — not voters — may end up deciding the next US presidential race.
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