Opinion
National Chamber Trashes Voting Rights
“Challenging People to Shape
a Better Future Now”
B ERNIE F OSTER
Founder/Publisher
B OBBIE D ORE F OSTER
Executive Editor
T ED B ANKS
Advertising Manager
J ERRY F OSTER
Account Executive
L ISA L OVING
News Editor
H ELEN S ILVIS
Multimedia Editor
B RUCE P OINSETTE
Reporter
D AVID K IDD
Graphic Designer
M ONICA J. F OSTER
Seattle Office Coordinator
J ULIE K EEFE
S USAN F RIED
Photographers
d
f
The Skanner Newspaper, established
in October 1975, is a weekly publica-
tion, published each Wednesday by
IMM Publications Inc.,
I
have enjoyed an excellent rela-
tionship with the National
Black Chamber of Commerce
over the years. I have conducted
media training sessions at national
conventions, spoken at functions
sponsored by state and local affili-
ates, and enjoyed a friendship with
many of its top officers, including
president and co-founder Harry C.
Alford. That’s why I was stunned
and mystified when, in the course
of researching a challenge to Sec-
tion 5 of the Voting Rights Act of
1965, to learn that the group had
filed a friend-of-the-court petition
with the U.S. Supreme Court sup-
porting an objection filed by
Shelby County, Ala.
In short, Shelby County – after
losing at the federal district and
appeals court level – appealed to
the Supreme Court, hoping to
overturn the provision of the Vot-
ing Rights Act that requires
jurisdictions with a proven history
of discrimination in elections to
get pre-clearance from the Justice
Department before implementing
changes in voting laws that might
adversely impact Black voters.
The court is expected to issue a
ruling next summer.
In its petition, the National
Black Chamber of Commerce
said, “Section 5 is no longer nec-
essary to combat widespread and
persistent discrimination in voting
and now, perversely [my empha-
sis], serves as an impediment to
racial neutrality in voting and to
the empowerment of state and
local officials who represent
minority constituencies.”
Perverse? Nothing is more per-
T HE C URRY
R EPORT
George E.
Curry
verse than a Black business group,
with no direct interest in a case,
favoring the elimination of a major
tool that helps remove the last ves-
tiges of discrimination against
African-American voters and
officeholders.
I placed a call to Alford to ask
why the National Black Chamber
of Commerce decided to align
Black elected officials.
But there is only one problem
with Alford’s position – no rep-
utable national organization
representing Black elected offi-
cials have called for an end to
Section 5 or any other provision of
the Voting Rights Act. Not the
Congressional Black Caucus. Not
the National Black Caucus of
State Legislators. Not the National
Conference of Black Mayors. Not
the National Organization of
Black County Officials.
I told Alfred even if he believes
what he was saying, there are
ways for jurisdictions covered by
Section 5 to “bail out” of the pre-
clearance requirement. In fact, I
told him, 46 jurisdictions had done
just that and two more cases are
The National Black Chamber of
Commerce is opposing extension of
the Voting Rights Act of 1965
itself with right-wing groups that
routinely oppose affirmative
action, the Voting Rights Act, and
any other legislation that seeks to
level the playing field for African-
Americans and other people of
color.
Alford said he filed the brief out
of concern for Black lawmakers,
many elected after passage of the
Voting Rights Act of 1965. He
asserted that the cumbersome pre-
clearance process is a burden on
pending. So if any official wants
to be exempted, all they need to do
is show they have not run discrim-
inatory voting operations for the
past 10 years.
After having assured me earlier
that he had read the voting law,
Alford said evidently he had “not
read far enough” because he was
unaware of that bail out provision.
It’s perverse for Alford to chal-
lenge the provision of an
important law that he was not thor-
oughly familiar with.
Finally, the National Black
Chamber of Commerce (not to be
confused with its rival U.S. Black
Chamber) asserted in its petition:
“The Chamber rejects the assump-
tion
underlying
Congress’s
reauthorization of Section 5 of the
Voting Rights Act that the excep-
tional
circumstances
which
justified close federal oversight of
the electoral practices in many
states and localities in 1965 and
1975 persist today.”
Evidently, that was another per-
verse instance of Alford not
reading far enough into the public
record.
Congress renewed Section 5 of
the Voting Rights Act in 1970,
1975, 1982 and for another 25
years in 2006. In its petition, the
Justice Department noted, “based
on its exhaustive review of the
record, the [lower] court con-
firmed that Congress had found
ample evidence of a history and
ongoing pattern of purposeful,
state-sponsored voting discrimina-
tion in covered jurisdictions.”
With bipartisan support, the Vot-
ing Rights Act was extended in
2006 on a 390-33 vote in the
House and a 98-0 vote in the Sen-
ate. George W. Bush signed the
bill into law.
George E. Curry, former editor-
in-chief of Emerge magazine, is
editor-in-chief of the National
Newspaper Publishers Associa-
tion News Service.
415 N. Killingsworth St.,
P.O. Box 5455, Portland, OR 97228.
Telephone (503) 285-5555.
E-mail: info@theskanner.com
Raising the Social Security Retirement Age?
World Wide Web site:
http://www.theskanner.com
Fax: (503) 285-2900
The Skanner is a member of the
National Newspaper Pub lishers Associ-
ation and West Coast Black Pub lishers
Association.
All photos submitted become the
property of The Skanner. We are not re -
spon sible for lost or damaged photos
either solicited or unsolicited.
© 2012 The Skanner. ALL RIGHTS RE SERVED.
REPRODUCTION IN WHOLE OR IN PART
WITHOUT PERMISSION PROHIBITED.
To see The Skanner
News on your smart
phone go to
theskannermobile.com
or scan this QR code
with your app.
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Local news
Opinions
Jobs, Bids
Sports
Entertainment
Music reviews
Bulletin board
RSS feeds
Page 4 The Portland Skanner
D
iscussions of the fiscal cliff
also include discussions
about ways to change
Social Security and Medicare ben-
efits in order to save money. One
of the proposals is to raise the
Social Security retirement age to
70. After all, some argue, there is
nothing magic about 65 or 67, so
why not push the rate up to 70?
The difference is the kind of
work we do. I can’t imagine that I
will ever stop talking and writing,
advanced age notwithstanding.
However, someone who is waiting
tables, working in a nursing home,
or doing private household work
might not want, but need, to slow
it down after 65, or maybe even
earlier. Some people take their
Social Security earlier, although
they are lower, at age 62. Tired,
and with sometimes broken bod-
ies, they’d rather take less money
than keep working. Consider the
construction worker who has not
moved up into management. Will
he (or in 10 percent of cases, she)
still want to wield a hammer,
climb onto roofs, or do other
heavy work? Raising the Social
Security retirement age hurts these
people.
These folk are also hurt because
their life expectancy is also lower.
People with less education have
shorter life expectancies than
those who are more highly educat-
ed. African Americans have lower
life expectancy rates than Whites,
(although this gap is closing. Thus,
November 28, 2012
B ENNETT
C OLLEGE
Julianne
Malveaux
people who have paid into the sys-
tem, but they will get less out of
when they live shorter lives.
Again, those at the bottom are dis-
advantaged by public policy that
the dangers of smoking, but
women who lack a high school
diploma are more likely than oth-
ers to smoke. Indeed, among
women the levels of smoking have
risen, while smoking rates had
declined among men. Researchers
who study these issues suggest
that women are smoking more
because of the many pressures
women face, including being part
of the “sandwich generation” jug-
gling both elder care and child
care. I was talking to an elder
whose smoking habit spans more
While Americans do not like to talk
about class, poor and working class
people do less well in our society than
others
seems race and class neutral.
Why the gap in life expectancy?
Part has to do with higher rates of
smoking among less educated
(which propels obesity), and the
lack of health insurance, especial-
ly among those with lower
incomes and less education. Oba-
macare partly solves the insurance
problems, but those living in an
unreal time warp seem to think
Mitt Romney won the election and
they are acting accordingly by
attempting to repeal health care
reform.
Most of us got the memo about
than 50 years, and when we talked
about the issue, she responded that
she was over 70, still living, and
wasn’t about to change. We talked
a bit about stress and ways that
smoking is a tension-tamer for
her. I suggested she try yoga, and
she just about laughed me out of
the room.
The health insurance gap
between those who are highly edu-
cated and less well educated is
growing. Among working age
adults without a high school diplo-
ma, 43 percent have no health
insurance, up from 35 percent a
decade ago. On the other hand,
only 10 percent of those with a
college education lacked health
insurance.
While Americans do not like to
talk about class, poor and working
class people do less well in our
society than others. For example,
attempting to eliminate funding
for Planned Parenthood has a
greater impact on poor women
without health insurance than oth-
ers whose contraceptive needs are
covered by their insurance. Yet
the right wing attempts to charac-
terize Planned Parenthood as an
abortion center, not a place that
offers education on contraception,
breast cancer, and other health
issues.
Extending the Bush tax cuts for
the wealth certainly has a dispro-
portionate impact on the poor and
working class, but there are hidden
attacks on the poorest in our
nation. Raising the Social Securi-
ty retirement age, eliminating
Planned Parenthood, and attacking
Obamacare are all implicit attacks
on the poor. The class status of
our federal elected officials sug-
gests that Congress just doesn’t
get it. But we elect these people.
What does that say about us?
Julianne Malveaux is a Wash-
ington, D.C.-based economist and
writer. She is President Emerita
of Bennett College for Women in
Greensboro, N.C.