The Implementation of Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act: A Retrospective on the Role of Courts

1979 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 154
Author(s):  
Gayle Binion
Keyword(s):  
Voting Rights ◽  
Voting Rights Act

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.

From Suffragists to Pink Pussyhats: In Search of Intersectional Solidarity

2020 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 490-493
Author(s):  
Chaya Crowder ◽  
Candis Watts Smith
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
100Th Anniversary ◽  
Voting Rights Act ◽  
Sojourner Truth ◽  
Nineteenth Amendment ◽  
Combahee River Collective ◽  
Feminist Movements

The 100th anniversary of the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment is an opportunity to reflect on the role of women in American politics. The tools of intersectionality allow scholars to pinpoint the progress and pitfalls produced by ongoing modes of sexism and patriarchy as well as racism and classism. It is now well known that major movements for the rights of American women have not always addressed the issues specific to black women (Simien 2006). Indeed, in 1851, Sojourner Truth discussed this issue of not being included in conversations about women’s rights (or civil rights for blacks) in her alleged “Ain’t I a Woman” speech. Similarly, the fact that Ida B. Wells and other black women were told to process at the back of the 1913 Women’s March on Washington is another illustration of the historical exclusion of black women by their white counterparts (Boissoneault 2017). Decades later and even after the 1965 Voting Rights Act enforced black women’s enfranchisement, the Combahee River Collective (1977) noted the exclusion of issues that affect black women by both 1970s white feminist movements and male-dominated anti-racist movements.

scholarly journals Human Enhancements and Voting: Towards a Declaration of Rights and Responsibilities of Beings

Philosophies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 5
Author(s):  
S. J. Blodgett-Ford
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
Governance Structure ◽  
The Other ◽  
First Person ◽  
Person Perspective ◽  
First Person Perspective ◽  
To Come ◽  
Additional Option

The phenomenon and ethics of “voting” will be explored in the context of human enhancements. “Voting” will be examined for enhanced humans with moderate and extreme enhancements. Existing patterns of discrimination in voting around the globe could continue substantially “as is” for those with moderate enhancements. For extreme enhancements, voting rights could be challenged if the very humanity of the enhanced was in doubt. Humans who were not enhanced could also be disenfranchised if certain enhancements become prevalent. Voting will be examined using a theory of engagement articulated by Professor Sophie Loidolt that emphasizes the importance of legitimization and justification by “facing the appeal of the other” to determine what is “right” from a phenomenological first-person perspective. Seeking inspiration from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) of 1948, voting rights and responsibilities will be re-framed from a foundational working hypothesis that all enhanced and non-enhanced humans should have a right to vote directly. Representative voting will be considered as an admittedly imperfect alternative or additional option. The framework in which voting occurs, as well as the processes, temporal cadence, and role of voting, requires the participation from as diverse a group of humans as possible. Voting rights delivered by fiat to enhanced or non-enhanced humans who were excluded from participation in the design and ratification of the governance structure is not legitimate. Applying and extending Loidolt’s framework, we must recognize the urgency that demands the impossible, with openness to that universality in progress (or universality to come) that keeps being constituted from the outside.

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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