Pavlov's Negro Strikes Again
Pavlov's Negro revisited.
Several months ago I wrote a piece entitled Pavlov's Negro (blog October 16, 2005) in which I explained how a Neo Nazi group was able to manipulate black reaction to their advantage in Toledo, OH. After that I even received a hit on the blog from the leader of that Nazi group acknowledging the truth of what I had said. Well, here is yet another example of how the Pavlovian stimulus and reaction is about to be played on us. While Nazis, the KKK and others have gotten hip to how easily we are manipulated, the greatest benefactors of this manipulation are those on the liberal left. They have run their game on us for decades.
You either have heard or very soon will be hearing about the pending expiration of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and how some in Congress are fighting its extension. You will be hearing allot about how racist Republicans, southerners and the usual suspects are wanting to turn back civil rights and deprive black folks of their right to vote. But what you are not hearing is why or whether the extension is necessary, and/or what is actually included in this so-called "extension." While I am totally in favor of free and fair voting rights, as most people are, and while I am the first to say that action was needed to repeal Jim Crow laws, I would bet that almost everyone understands that there have to be some restrictions on who votes and how. The difference is where the line is drawn on those restrictions. For example, would we all be in favor of allowing people to vote several times or in different states in the same election? Would we favor Russian citizens living in Russia to vote in U.S. elections? Would we want Chinese citizens voting from afar in our elections? Of course we would not. That is of course absurd, but now let's ask the question of whether we should allow non citizens living in the U.S. to vote, and the answer varies, especially in California. Up in Washington state where there is a large non-citizen Asian and Russian population, we could say let's allow let's let Chinese and Russian non-citizens to vote in our elections. I would bet that there would be those who would not have a problem with that happening. But, while the Voting Rights Act was written with the intent of conferring the full rights of citizenship on citizens who were deprive dof this right, it was not intended to go beyond that.
While we will be hearing a great deal about how those opposed to the reauthorization of the act are by default evil and racist; what are we not hearing? First of all we are not hearing that only section 5 of the act expires, not the entire piece of legislation. Section 5 only applies to 9 states and select counties and cities of 8 more states. What we are also not hearing about the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is that there is a provision attached to the reauthorization that has nothing to do with the original intent of the legislation. That is the requirement for foreign language ballots to be provided for those “citizens" who are not proficient enough to read English ballots. Somebody correct me if I am wrong, but I thought that a requirement for citizenship in the U.S. was English proficiency.
We live in a drastically different world from that world we lived in, in 1965. In 1965 virtually all polls in the south were run by whites with a determination to hinder the "black vote." Today polls are run by polling officials from that community, hence black folks running polling places in black areas, Hispanics in Hispanic areas, etc.. Therefore, the likelihood of anyone being hindered from voting in their own neighborhood precinct on racial grounds is very unlikely.
Those are the facts, but I suspect that will not matter, as facts rarely do matter, when manipulating emotion works much more effectively. Black paranoia will be used once again as the Trojan Horse for introducing things that black people never intended or even agree with. The Pavlovian reaction on the part of black people to the "racist" stimulus presented to them in the media, by those with an agenda that has nothing to do with uplifting black or other minority people groups, will cause weak lawmakers who know should better to do what they know they should not. They will vote for legislation whose time has passed, and most probably will have attached things that were never intended by those who wrote and voted for the Act in 1965.
That is how things work in America today. It is a sad state of affairs if you ask me.