Yesterday, hate transcended 60 years of the Republican Southern Strategy. The party of states’ rights suddenly became anti-states’ rights. Why
Black people and white people consume marijuana at roughly the same rate. However, Black people are arrested 2 to 5 times as much as white people for marijuana (some regions arrest at a greater disparity than others). “States’ rights” was the issue before the Civil War and again during the Civil Rights era. Should an individual state have the right to have slavery Hundreds of thousands of Americans died to make slavery illegal in every state. States’ rights were the reason why Southern states had Jim Crow after it was banned in the rest of the country. More currently, states’ rights were touted as a reason for individual state ID voter requirements that have a proven disparate effect on non-white voters.
Ever since Richard Nixon’s Southern Strategy reversed the roles of the Democratic and Republican Parties (after Democrat Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts), making the Republican Party the party of racism, the Republicans have actively pursued a path of gerrymandering and voter suppression of non-white people to maintain power.
Why is Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III suddenly interested in marijuana I think it has a lot to do with Republicans fearful of Roy “banned by the mall” Moore’s loss in Alabama. Republicans know, in a nation becoming “minority-majority” in roughly 25 years, they are going out of business unless they resort to lies and dirty tricks.
Keeping marijuana illegal allows Republicans to continue to push Black and Latino people off the voting rolls for “crimes” like possessing individual quantities of marijuana.
The other big move yesterday was Trump canceling his own commission on election fraud. He set it up to find the “millions” of illegal (Latino) voters that Trump claims voted for Clinton. He’s going to turn it over to the Department of Homeland Security, so they terrorize Americans. The top 13 people listed on the DHS website under leadership are all white. No Blacks, no Latinos, no Asians.
