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The New Racism

'Black People In The South Have Less Political Power Than Any Time Since The Civil Rights Movement'
Whitney Snyder
By 

HuffPost

** FILE ** A 17-year-old civil rights demonstrator, defying an anti-parade ordinance of Birmingham, Ala., is attacked by a police dog in this May 3, 1963 file photo. On the afternoon of May 4, 1963, during a meeting at the White House with members of a political group, President Kennedy discussed the photo which had appeared on the front page of that days New York Times, (AP Photo/Bill Hudson, File)
** FILE ** A 17-year-old civil rights demonstrator, defying an anti-parade ordinance of Birmingham, Ala., is attacked by a police dog in this May 3, 1963 file photo. On the afternoon of May 4, 1963, during a meeting at the White House with members of a political group, President Kennedy discussed the photo which had appeared on the front page of that days New York Times, (AP Photo/Bill Hudson, File)

But the systematic way in which Republican majorities in Southern statehouses are undoing so many of the hard-won gains of the civil rights movement suggests that the end is nigh. Whether it’s by imposing new voter-ID laws, slashing public assistance, refusing Medicaid expansion, or repealing progressive legislation like North Carolina’s Racial Justice Act, the GOP-controlled governments of Southern states are behaving in ways that are at times as hostile to the interests of their African American citizens as Jim Crow Democrats were half a century ago.

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