Howard u HBC

-=-=

an 8 26

President Donald Trump won North Carolina three times, yet as Democrats seem poised to take the state's Senate seat in the upcoming midterm election, Republicans are going to great lengths to cling to power — including by limiting voting opportunity for North Carolina's African American community.

"North Carolina’s state board of elections once again refused to provide an accessible early voting location at North Carolina A&T State University, the nation’s largest historically Black college or university," reported Democracy Docket's Natalie Hausmann on Thursday. "With student activists in the front row, the GOP-controlled board rejected student pleas for an on-campus polling place in November’s general election during a Thursday vote."

Hausmann added, "Earlier this year, the board voted along party lines to deny students a voting site on their campus. Brian Kennedy of Democracy North Carolina told Democracy Docket at the time that the vote served as a 'blueprint for what voter suppression across the nation can look like.' Now, it’s happened all over again."

The students were allowed to attend the meeting in which the decision was announced, even though that choice was ultimately made against them. In addition to making it more difficult for African Americans to vote in a state with a long history of segregation and other forms of racial discrimination, the decision is controversial because it specifically targets a voting practice that is disproportionately popular among African American communities.

"The denial followed a series of election board votes to curtail Sunday voting – popular among black voters – across several counties," Hausmann wrote. She went on to quote one of the Democrats on the state board who outright claimed the decision could have been racially motivated.

"Jeff Carmon, one of two Democrats on the state board, said some GOP county plans had 'racial undertones,'" Hausmann reported. "'Can we identify a single voter who is better served by having fewer opportunities to cast a ballot?' Carmon asked at the start of the meeting."

-=-=

edit bd 10 22

rural trumpistas?

USA Today runs a daily poll on its frontpage. On Friday, the public survey results were on gun laws. “If it were harder to obtain guns legally, Americans think there would be __ mass shootings.”

Sixty-six percent said there would be far fewer or somewhat fewer mass shootings. Nearly 30 percent said no difference. (A smattering of cranks, 5 percent, said there would be more or somewhat more.)

I bring this to your attention not so much to bolster the prospect of tighter gun laws (though it does), but to point out a pretty common demographic pattern – that a radical third stands against the majority with respect to issues concerning us all. Whether gun control, abortion or “indoctrination” in public school, there’s always about a third of the country representing the country’s shame.

This alone isn’t noteworthy. After all, every country has its yokels and yahoos. But not every country has a political setup that gives yokels and yahoos more practical power than the majority. Very few countries, if any, give voters in sparsely populated farming areas an effective veto over densely populated areas with large urban centers.

That setup – or the political advantages of it – are apparent when the Republicans slander cities, and in the slandering, they protect those same advantages. Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan said last week: “Do you feel safe in cities controlled by the Left? Cities that defunded the police? Cities that ignore police staffing issues. No. No. No.”

The dynamic of political power between urban and rural is obviously asymmetrical. That’s by design. It’s to prevent liberal democracy from flourishing fully. The thinking at the time of the founding was that a fully flourishing liberal democracy would inflict tyranny on the minority. In the case of the founders, rich white men like them.

But the problem is and has been the opposite.

A radical minority dictates the terms of American democracy.

I suspect that even people with something better to do than pay attention to politics get this. The Electoral College stands against democracy. So does the US Senate. The courts, especially the Supreme Court, do, too. We liberals say “it’s a republic, not a democracy” is wrong, but we don’t consider whether right-wingers have a point. Saying they’re wrong is more theoretical than empirical.

We should consider something else that’s more theoretical than empirical – the idea that political violence is an exception to the rule. Precisely, that political violence is random, irrational, senseless: something that deviates from the norm. It’s nothing of the sort.

Its origins have always been here.

It’s that place, demographically speaking, where the minority believes, say, that tighter gun laws will make no difference to shooting massacres, even amid mass death, even amid murder rates in Republican-controlled state outstripping those of all other states.

What respect is the truth (or anything) owed when a third controls contramajoritarian institutions built into the system by design? What respect is the political majority owed by a political minority? Why would the politically strong give respect to the politically weak?

But sometimes those contramajoritarian institutions fail (or appear to). If and when they do, this radical third of America is entitled, on account of having political advantages, to resort to violence in order to maintain those same political advantages. While democracy is the point for the political majority, with violence the exception, violence is the point for the political minority, with democracy the exception.

So when a school kid is sent a letter like the one above (regarding the child’s mother, a Loudoun County, Virginia, school board member), it should not be seen as extraordinary, because it’s actually ordinary. After all, what’s more common? People discussing hard topics like “critical race theory” in public school? Or people losing their minds over things they don’t understand and don’t want to understand?

The radical third has been living among us since the founding. They had kids. Their kids had kids had kids. This is how they think. This is what they do. The difference is of degree, not kind. As long as the contramajoritarian institutions hold, all’s well. If they don’t, well …

According to USA Today,“bomb threats at [historically Black colleges and universities] had swelled to at least 57” since February, “leaving administrators and students on edge and rekindling a history of violence aimed at Black students seeking educational advancement.”

The FBI said that it had focused on six subjects in 2021, but arrested no one, according to USA Today. In the meantime, however, “the menacing behavior continued into the next school year.”

“If we allow people to feel like they can continue to do this without being held accountable, they will always be able to be disruptive,” Walter Kimbrough told the newspaper. “We’re the only group where there have been threats, and nobody has been caught” (my italics).

If it isn’t apparent, the source of these threats is the radical third of America, where democracy is undeserving of respect and where the rule of law applies only if it maintains baked-in political advantages.

A radical third dictates the terms of American democracy.

It’s empirical, not theoretical.

http://www.southernstudies.org/2016/06/student-protests-spare-north-carolina-hbcus-from-t.html

Student protests spare North Carolina HBCUs from tuition hit

"If you can't give away $70 million, then I'm not going to try to."

So said North Carolina state Sen. Tom Apodaca, a Republican who chairs the powerful Rules Committee, after recently deciding to remove three historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) that were originally included in his proposed Access to Affordable College Education Act, Senate Bill 873, which aimed to lower tuition at five public schools to $500 a semester for in-state students and $2,500 a semester for out-of-state students.

The five schools initially included in the bill were Western Carolina, the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, Fayetteville State, Winston-Salem State, and Elizabeth City State. The latter three are HBCUs and all but Western Carolina — Apodaca's alma mater — are classified as schools that disproportionately serve minority populations.

Alumni and students, particularly from the HBCUs, immediately rallied in opposition to the bill, citing concerns about funding. While the bill proposed adding $70 million to the state budget to cover the funding lost by the decreased tuition, there was no guarantee future legislatures would continue to cover the cost. There were also concerns that the reduced tuition might lower the value of an education at these institutions.

"Although we know it not to be true, the reduction of tuition could create a perception that the quality of education by FSU is inferior to that of other institutions," Chancellor James Anderson of Fayetteville State University said in a statement.

Moreover, one of the original provisions of the bill, which was later removed, would have called for the "evaluation of University names on enrollment, academic strength, and diversity." This was seen as a direct attempt to detach HBCUs from their historic legacies and make them more attractive to white students.

Though many of the proponents of the bill, including Black legislators such as Gladys Robinson, a Guilford County Democrat, referred to the bill as "well intentioned," HBCU students across the state were not buying it. After they held mass demonstrations at the legislature, all the HBCUs were dropped from the bill.

Of the negative reactions to the bill, Apodaca said, "I've never tried to help people in my life and been treated so poorly."

But HBCU students' skepticism of Apodaca's claims that he just wanted to help by expanding access to education stems in no small part from an action he took back in 2013 to limit their access to another critical place — the voting booth.

In the wake of the Supreme Court's Shelby County v. Holder decision gutting the Voting Rights Act, Apodaca stated, "Now we can go on with the full bill, now that the headache is out the way."

...