“As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.”~ Galatians 3.27-29 NRSV
Even as the nation celebrates the Fourth of July, many of us take for granted the rights that have come to us by virtue of the blood, sweat, and tears of our ancestors in this so-called land of liberty. Case in point is the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision on Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 v. Holder, No. 08-322 concerning the viability of the Voting Rights Act. After months of debate and deliberation, the New York Times reported that the court faced a crucial question: Had Congress overstepped its constitutional power in 2006 by reauthorizing the act’s Section 5, which requires states and localities with a history of discrimination to obtain federal permission before altering any aspect of their local voting practices? When all was said and done, the Supreme Court offered an 8-1 decision in favor of retaining the Voting Rights Act. Writing on behalf of the majority Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. upheld the court’s approach saying that it stretched the statutory text, but he ultimately the consensus for most of the justices indicated that court should avoid deciding hard constitutional questions whenever possible. This basically meant that they chose to defer any meaningful judgment on the cornerstone of American democracy—the right to vote—until some unforeseen future date. While this is helpful in the short term, much work has to be done within the American electoral process in order to avoid the sort of political controversies as demonstrated in the now infamous 2000 Bush v. Gore recount and 2004 presidential election debacle . Moreover, this statement highlights the fact that voting, as the core of our highly prized democracy, is still not clearly defined and established within the US Constitution but is contingent upon the whim and will of either Congress or the Supreme Court. The need to change this troubling reality is clearly necessary.
Moreover, during this decision, Justice Clarence Thomas was the only one among his colleagues who felt that Section 5 was unconstitutional. As the only African American on the high court, for him to say that ''the violence, intimidation and subterfuge that led Congress to pass Section 5 and this court to uphold it no longer remains,'' is a sad and baffling fact. It is truly pitiful that Justice Thomas has been totally brainwashed and bamboozled by such a massive level of self-hatred and delusion to allow him to voice dissent against civil rights legislation that made his ascendency to the Supreme Court possible! When first enacted in 1965, the Voting Rights Act literally made it possible for millions of African Americans to the polls but only after several years of protest marches, lobbying, and sacrifices in terms of imprisonment, personal injury and even death of countless civil rights advocates. Even the most hard-hearted and vindictive members of the Republican-controlled Congress agreed by an overwhelming margin to renew the part of the legislation in 2006, which provided for the act’s advance approval requirement for another 25 years. Interestingly, President George W. Bush—certainly not the poster child for fair and free democratic practice—signed the renewal. If they could see that, why can’t Clarence Thomas? In this day and age, we can look at the history of the Constitution and the court in this nation, we need to consider critical race theory more closely. As a school of legal thought, critical race theory asserts that the consolidation and preservation of societal power, rather than the dictates of judicial principle and legal precedent, has been the underlying basis of legal judgments and race have served as a prime mover in that endeavor. Whereas law professors and critical race theorists such as Derrick Bell and Kimberle Crenshaw consider judicial rulings to result from the workings of the complex intersection of race with other social phenomena (such as gender, class, ethnicity, sexuality, etc.), racism is deemed as the primary factor for discrimination and exclusion within modern society.
Moreover, even if the election of Barack Obama as president of the United States marks a historic shift in the power of the ballot in our society, the failure of Clarence Thomas to acknowledge what is at stake for full citizenship in terms of freedom, justice, and equality if we do not secure the Voting Rights Act not only for ourselves but for future generations. Anyone who has a doubt about this situation needs only look around the globe to see the electoral crises in places like Iraq, Honduras, Myanmar, Zimbabwe, Haiti, Pakistan, Lebanon, Sri Lanka, and most recently the turmoil in Iran. Our hope and expectation has to be invested in ensuring that all of God’s people can represented in their government and secure the destiny that God has in store for each of us.
Something You Should Check Out…
As former chair and longest-serving member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Mary Frances Berry chronicles the enduring struggle of this body to maintain its independence in monitoring the U.S. government and encouraging the nation to remain true to its ideals of equality. Since its creation by President Eisenhower in 1957, Berry illustrates how the commission became the nation’s conscience during the civil rights struggles of the 1960s. Although Democratic presidents—including Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton—have had their respective difficulties with the commission, it has been Republican presidents such as Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and the Bushes who worked to undermine the commission’s independent fact-finding and reporting functions in the hopes to garner complete support for their administrations’ policies. Using her consummate skills as both a historian and lawyer, Berry is peerless when she offers examples of how the commission’s vision has expanded over the last half-century. It becomes quite evident that even though race—particularly discrimination against blacks—was the group’s foremost focus, attention gradually shifted over time to include women, gays / lesbians, immigrants, and the disabled. Looking ahead to the future, she proposes that the commission ought to refocus on its original commitment as well as expand its scope to include both civil and human rights. She states that doing so will facilitate America’s compliance can be placed in the context of international human rights standards to provide some much-needed self-reflection and constructive criticism.
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