Once again an American past imbued with racism and discrimination is resurrected, after the GOP Georgia Governor Brian Kemp last week—against a backdrop of a slave plantation—signed a piece of legislation passed by Republicans that will severely impact the voting rights of Black residents.
President Biden was so incensed that he characterized it as “Jim Crow in the 21st century.” He viewed the nearly 100-page legislation as a “blatant attack on the Constitution and good conscience.”
The action comes as a direct response to the last election cycle in which the state of Georgia, turned blue, was so decisive in changing the political landscape.
Gov. Kemp’s support of Georgia lawmakers is just the most recent attempt to turn back the clock, and President Biden is spot on in his challenge of this insidious attack on the democratic process.
The world witnessed a violent aspect of this retrenchment back in January with the mob upheaval at the Capitol, and now lawmakers, not only in Georgia, are seeking ways to make these reactionary feelings less bloody, but no less consequential, by ramrodding laws through state governmental bodies.
Yes, Mr. President, Jim Crow is alive and well, and what he represents is just as demeaning and dangerous as it was back in the 1870s when the KKK came into existence.
What happened recently in Georgia is a harbinger that other states—and state rights is the operative phrase here—are moving speedily to evoke and to halt the Biden’s administration’s determination to right the wrongs of the previous years, if not the distant past.
Voter suppression has emerged with an even greater portent to deny the franchise of African Americans and other people of color, and we applaud President Biden for addressing this spreading menace.
Either we become more vigilant and steadfast against this diabolical plot or succumb to its devastation. As one of our media mavens has suggested, “We must pay close attention” or be complicit in the undertow drowning our quest for total freedom and justice.
We hear you loud and clear President Biden, and Joe we got your back!