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Race Politics

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Recently I read this news story on Reuters: U.S. Supreme Court rejects Michigan straight-ticket voting appeal. Straight-ticket voting is having the option on the top of the ticket to vote for all candidates from one party instead of casting an individual vote for each office on the ticket. A Judge suspended the law pending litigation and the state tried to appeal this injunction to both the appeals court and the supreme court and both rejected it. Opponents of the law claim that the law aims to reduce minorities turn out which hurt the democratic party.

This story is one of many recent stories about voting rights where a certain measure aiming to regulate voting is rejected or blocked by courts because it may reduce the minorities turn out.
These stories show how little these people who claim to defend minorities actually think of minorities. If you believe what these people claim about minorities you will think that minority people are victims who cannot obtain driver licenses, cannot read the ballot and make decisions about candidates and cannot show up on election day to vote so we need to let them vote from home and give them weeks in advance to cast their ballots.

Racism in the United States started as an excuse for slavery. Slavery proponents who wanted to make slavery look legitimate created a lot of literature to say black people are inferior to whites and cannot live independently without a white master to take care of them and explained slavery based on that as an institution to help black people. Unfortunately, the modern black and minorities defendants use the same logic of slavery proponents to explain their policies that aim to make minorities dependent on the government. It is sad to see a majority of the black population in the United States fall victims to these racist ideas that aim to keep them as loyal subjects of the Democratic party machine, the same party that supported slavery, created Jim Crew laws and instituted segregation.

Many white people as well believe that they have a moral obligation to support these racist ideas as a payback for the sin of slavery. But it’s important to realize that slavery didn’t start with blacks. European used to enslave other Europeans, Asians used to take other Asians as slaves and Africans used to take other Africans as slaves. The Europeans taking Africans as slaves is a late development of the 17th and 18th century and African slaves were sold to Europeans by African and Arab slave traders in exchange for European goods such as Guns. People who were slaves and people who enslaved them died generations ago so no one living now is directly affected by slavery. Many immigrants from the Carribean, latin America, and Asia arrived in the United States in the twentieth century with little education and skills and major language barrier but succeeded over a couple of generations to achieve high social and economic status without help from anyone.

Enacting discriminatory policies such as affirmative action and racial quotas is not needed. These policies usually have reverse effect because people will view the success of any minority person as an outcome of such policies instead of merit based success. These policies only serve the needs of opportunist politicians who want to keep the minority population as loyal subjects and guaranteed votes.

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