The Congressional Black Caucus, Minority Voting Rights, and the U.S. Supreme Court

Preface and Acknowledgments

Preface and Acknowledgments “In the year 2007 Congress will once again convene to decide whether or not Blacks should retain the right to vote. Does anyone realize that . . . African-Americans are the only group of people who still require permission under the U.S. Constitution to vote?! . . . Our right to vote should no longer be up for discussion, review and/or evaluation!” —Message circulated via e-mail and the Internet, ca. 1998 “When President Bush met with . . . the Congressional Black Caucus, Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. . . . asked him if he would support extension and strengthening of the Voting Rights Act when it comes up for renewal in 2007. Bush responded that he did not support voting rights for the District of Columbia. Jackson said that was not what he asked; he asked about extending the [act]. Bush replied that he was not aware of the act and would look at it when it got to his desk.” —Chicago Sun-Times, March 1, 2005 The Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA) is one of the crowning achievements of the American civil rights movement. One of the most powerful catalysts of democracy in this country, it has ampli‹ed thousands of political voices that had long been muted by racial, ethnic, and language discrimination at the polls and elsewhere. Thanks to the VRA, the corpus of elected of‹cials is more diverse and thus more representative of the U.S. population than at any other time in the country’s history. Yet the act is shrouded in ignorance. For example, the ‹rst epigraph comes from a message that circulated e-mail inboxes and the Internet for several years despite clari‹cations by civil rights organizations and the Justice Department . Even though most Americans believe that voting is a fundamental right, the legislation that protects this right for so many is often misunderstood to the point of hysteria or barely registers on the national radar. Moreover, since the 1990s the VRA—and minority voting rights—has been caught in an increasingly intense cross ‹re between the Congressional Black Caucus and the Supreme Court over the meaning and scope of the act. My own ignorance about the VRA eventually compelled me to learn more about it. As a literal child of the 1960s, I do not recall the events that led to the act’s passage. I grew up in San Diego and lived for the ‹rst ten years of my adulthood in Orange County, California—hardly hotbeds of political dissent or activism. Given my distance from the front lines of the civil rights movement, my memories of it derive largely from what was on television news and from eavesdropping on grown-ups, whose commentaries were generally not intended for juvenile ears. Like so many who bene‹ted from the civil rights movement without contributing to it, I understood little about my voting rights and took them for granted. It probably did not help that I cut my political teeth on a tortured series of events including the ragged culmination of the Vietnam War, the revelation of the Pentagon Papers, the ensuing Watergate scandal and impeachment proceedings against President Nixon, the oil crisis, and the Iranian hostage crisis.Along with many of my jaded peers, I relied more on Saturday Night Live, Mad Magazine, Richard Pryor, George Carlin, and the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers for my political socialization than on family, teachers , or the mainstream news media.When I reached voting age, I exercised my right to the franchise, although I did so more out of curiosity and a sense of racial commitment than faith in or knowledge about the democratic process. College did little to educate me on the topic of the VRA or minority voting rights more broadly. This is in part my fault. As a political science major, I was so completely taken with international relations, foreign languages , and study abroad that American politics were of no interest to me whatsoever. I petitioned out of the required introductory course in American government (with unexpectedly far-reaching rami‹cations, given that I now routinely teach such courses). In addition, course offerings on race and politics were rare at my undergraduate institution in the early 1980s. A decade later, while I was pursuing a master’s degree in public policy , the topic of minority voting rights never came up. Not until the second year of my doctoral studies did I “discover” the VRA in a seminar on voting and democracy taught by Professor Kathryn...