The New Face Of Exclusion

My great-grandfather probably couldn't vote because he was a slave. My grandfather couldn't vote in the state of his birth, Georgia... because in his youth, it was actually against the law. When my father and mother were young people, they couldn't vote in some places because the Ku Klux Klan would and could make you disappear if you pressed the issue and the White Citizens Councils had poll taxes and all kinds of other foolishness to stop them from voting. The young black man of today can't vote because he's on "papers" (parole or probation) and therefore, has lost his right to vote. The more things change, the more things stay the same.

I didn't notice it at first but in November of 2008, when so many of us was excited about voting for the first African-American president in history, there were a few guys hanging around that couldn't vote. I was talking to a number of cats about registering and they were telling me that they couldn't vote because they were on parole or probation. They really wanted to vote but their present legal situation made that impossible. A number of black males in my neighborhood are on parole or probation and thus, can't vote and are also job challenged. Of course, I know that this is basically their own fault that they've been in prison, but it would seem to me that after a person has served their time, they should be allowed to vote. Why is this right taken from them, but the right to drive, drink, own property, and other rights are not?

No politician I've posed this question to has ever answered it to my liking or with anything that resembled any sense or logic. I understand that this law effects all races across the board, but it hurts the African-American and Latino population more so because we are, after all, minorities and need every available and willing vote possible. This just seems like a lame law to me. There has been attempts to repeal this in some states, but no real progress has been made. I understand that when you commit a crime, you must "pay a debt" to society, to some thinking. I am assuming that when the prisons release you, that debt is payed. So, shouldn't all rights and priveledges of citizenship be restored also? I'm just asking.

I wrote some years ago, when I was in my twenties, that all young black men should resist with everything in their power, the "man" when he starts that jail talk. I said that "jail was no place for a young brother to be." I was very radical in my thinking then, but I was not all wrong. Jail is no place for anybody to be, regardless of race. Now, I just feel like the criminal justice system is being used to deny some people the right to vote and to be full citizens. Today, it is perfectly legal to discriminate against criminals in nearly all the ways that it was once legal to discriminate against African Americans.

Once you’re labeled a felon, the old forms of discrimination--employment discrimination, housing discrimination, denial of the right to vote, denial of educational opportunity, denial of food stamps and other public benefits, and exclusion from jury service--are suddenly legal. As a criminal, you have scarcely more rights, and arguably less respect, than a black man living in Alabama at the height of Jim Crow. We have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it.