Political Participation and Political Structures: The Voting Rights Act of 1965

1980 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronald J. Terchek
Keyword(s):  
Political Participation ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
Voting Rights Act ◽  
Political Structures

scholarly journals Trusting an Abusive System: Systemic Racism and Black Political Engagement

2013 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 139-147
Author(s):  
Matthew Simmons
Keyword(s):  
Political Participation ◽  
Political System ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
African Descent ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Voting Rights Act ◽  
American Government ◽  
Systemic Racism ◽  
American President

Africana people in America have relied upon the utilization of political participation in order to address the economic and societal ills that plague its community. Africana people have made strides at all levels of the American government. Africana people were a vital voting block that helped to elect the first American President of African descent. However, studies have shown that the conditions of Africana people in America have not substantially changed since the Voting Rights Act of 1 965 was enacted. Africana political participation has not equated to socioeconomic equality on a large scale for the Africana community. Utilizing Feagin's Systemic Racism Theory, this project looks to examine why solely relying upon the American political system is symptomatic of disagency for Africana people and argues that this dis-agency does not empower our people to seek solutions. It places the power to liberate in the oppressor's hands, thus maintaining the inequality that continues to exist in America. This article also argues for Africana people to look to themselves as the avenue for addressing the societal ills that it faces. It also argues that Africana people must be their own mechanism for liberation. In addition, the terms Africana and Black will be used interchangeably in the project because those terms are most readily identifiable to people of African descent living in America.

Fear, Apathy, and Discrimination: A Test of Three Explanations of Political Participation

1973 ◽  
Vol 67 (4) ◽  
pp. 1288-1306 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lester M. Salamon ◽  
Stephen Van Evera
Keyword(s):  
Political Participation ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Relative Deprivation ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Voting Rights Act ◽  
Participation Rates ◽  
Low Education ◽  
Half Decade

Students of political participation have generally taken as given that nonparticipation in politics is a result of apathy, and that apathy is a function of low income, low education, and low status. This article suggests that there are two additional potential explanations of political participation rates besides that offered by the conventional wisdom. One of these acknowledges that political participation for some people in some circumstances involves considerable risk, so that nonparticipation can be explained more accurately in terms of fear than in terms of apathy. The other views political participation as a response to a sense of “relative deprivation” or discrimination. After each of these three “models” of political participation is translated into operational terms, it is tested by determining how well it accounts for the variations in black political participation rates in Mississippi during the first half-decade following the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The conclusion that emerges from these tests is that political scientists have erred seriously by overlooking the role of fear in political life. In situations like those faced by blacks in Mississippi, situations that are probably similar to those in parts of the “developing world,” apathy compares poorly with fear as an explanation of political participation.

Selma and the Place of Fiction in Historical Films

2018 ◽  
Vol 142 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-123
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Knapp
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
Voting Rights Act ◽  
Hybrid Nature ◽  
Historical Film ◽  
Self Defense ◽  
Historical Films ◽  
Moral Certainty ◽  
Historical Reenactments

Every historical film must contend with the possibility that its viewers will be scandalized by its mixture of fact and fiction, but no recent historical film has faced such pressure to justify its hybrid nature as Selma has, in large part because no recent film has taken on so momentous and controversial a historical subject: the civil rights marches from Selma to Montgomery that led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. The renewed urgency of the issues Selma dramatizes, along with the film’s own commitment to the “moral certainty” of the civil rights movement, helps explain why Selma wavers in a self-defense that links the fictionality of its historical reenactments to the purposely theatrical element of the marches themselves. But politics are not the only problem for fiction in Selma, and to show why, this essay compares Selma to an earlier historical film, The Westerner (1940), that openly flaunts the commercial nature of its fictionality.

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