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Anniversary of the passage of the act. [inaudible conversations] book here. You want to [inaudible conversations] good evening, everybody. Thank you so much for coming out tonight. Were so delighted to have such a great crowd on a middle of august summer evening. My names liss saw muscatine, im one of the coown tokers of politics prose. On behalf of our staff and on behalf of my husband and coowner, brad graham, we really are excited about this event and excited to have all of you here. I do want to mention just a couple of things, we are also now running book operations in three of the six busboys and poets in washington with plans to be in all of those, all of them before not too long. So if you happen to be at 14th and v in brooklyn or in tacoma and wander into one of the busboys, youll find our books there. We also are going to be the bookseller for the National Book festival over the saturday of labor day weekend. We encourage you all to come out. There are going to be more than a hundred authors there with its a tremendous literary event here in d. C. , so we hope well see some of you there as well. Before we get started, a couple of housekeeping things. I think those of you who have been to an event know that our guest will speak for a bit, and then theyll be happy to take questions. We have a microphone set up here. If you can make your way the a microphone to ask a question, thats helpful because we videotape this, and cspan is also here tonight taping this event. And for that reason especially, we do ask that you be mindful to keep your questions short and to the point and be mindful that as much as we would love to hear your ongoing opinions about all sorts of matters, in the interest of time and focus [laughter] if you could stay on subject and keep it brief, we would be very, very grateful for that. And then at the end ari will be happy to sign his book. Well do the signing lineup here as we usually do. There are plenty of copies up front if you havent had a chance to purchase it yet, we do have copies at the front register. In any case, it is a for all of us here a pleasure for all of us to host ari berman for a discussion of give us the battle the modern struggle for votes rights in america. Aris spent considerable time thinking and writing about the forces that shape american politics and the evolution of our political system. Hes a correspondent for the nation, hes contributed to other leading publications and is a frequent presence on npr and msnbc. Give us the ballot is his second book, and i have to say what a great contribution it is to explaining the great promise of american democracy but also its ongoing relentless challenges. With the election of barack obama in 2008 and his reelection in 2012 and the 50th an version or anniversary of selma and bloody sunday earlier this year, americans can be justify justifiably proud of the progress weve made since the days of poll taxes and the overt oppression of rights in our country. But as ari writes so persuasively, we should not take progress on Voting Rights for granted. I think sometimes we all get wound up about citizens united, but now after book, we will all be even more wound up about other things as well. His thorough and clear writing about events leading up to and following passage of the Voting Rights act and even immediately since the election of barack obama provides, frankly, a distressing picture of how far we have or havent come in achieving the full enfranchisement of our citizens and also what it means for democracy when many gains have been effectively reversed. Now with a president ial election looming in 2016 in which Voter Participation particularly of historically marginalized groups could be key who gets elected, it should be front and center in our minds. So we are delighted to serve as a forum for a discussioning that is so important discussioning that is so important here tonight and will be for many weeks and months to come, and we are also extremely happy and lucky that joining ari in conversation ishead Rick Hertzberg whos worked for many years has graced the pages of the new yorker where hes a Senior Editor and staff writer and a mainstay of the magazines talk of the town section. Hes also editorial director of the nation institute. Rick was a speech writer for president jimmy carter, an editor and correspondent at the new republic, and i think its fair to say without any exaggeration that hes one of the most respected political and social critics around. So we are just so delighted to have you both here. This is going to be a fascinating discussion. Thank you all for coming and thank you both for coming. [applause] thank you so much, lissa. Can everyone here okay . Im so glad to be back at, so glad to be back at politics prose. I mean, this is my number one favorite bookstore as a customer and as an author. This is a place that really knows how to treat a reader and how to treat a writer too. And im so glad to be here with ari. Hes one of the best political reporters and analysts of his generation. Ive been following his work for a long time, and im deeply impressed with the book were here to talk about tonight. Give us the ballot is about as timely a book as its possible to be, coming out on the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights act in the wake of the Supreme Court decision in the shelby case, and at the beginning of a president ial campaign in which the question is going to be less who are people going to vote for perhaps than which people are going to be allowed to vote. So, ari, i want the start, i want to start basically by asking you how you came to write this book. I mean, what made you start reporting on Voting Rights, and what made you think it could be a book, and what did you what are the big things you learned in the course of researching it . Well, thanks so much for that introduction, rick, and i just want to thank politics prose for having me. I think everyone recognizes this is one of the worlds greatest bookstores, so to be here is really special and to have cspan hear is great. This is my second book event, so im really grateful for everyone to come here, and im really grateful to have rick doing the moderating. Its a little surreal, because i grew up wanting to be rick. [laughter] i read all 720 pages of his book politics, some of them, you know, many times, and so to have rick praise my work is really, really meaningful. So really looking forward to this conversation. As to how i came to start reporting on Voting Rights, i had been covering american politics for the nation for some time, and i noticed in early 2011 after so many state legislatures had flipped from democratic to republican that a bunch of states all across the country were introducing new vote ising restrictions. Voting restrictions. Things like shutting down Voter Registration drives, cutting early voting, purging the voting rolls, disenfranchising exfelons, requiring governmentissued id which you never needed before to cast a ballot. And this was happening across the country, particularly in key swing states like florida and ohio and wisconsin. And no one was covering it. And there were just brief mentions in the New York Times or the washington post. And so i pitched a story to roll aring stone where i had written once before and who had covered Voting Rights issues in the past, and i said to rolling stone, i think this is a National Trend thats emerging, a very disturbing National Trend following the election of the first black president. We should cover this. Without really knowing much about the subject matter which i dont recommend young journalists to to do. Always want to know a hot about your subject matter before you pitch a story. But i became, i kind of took a crash course on Voting Rights, and i wrote this story in august 2011 with a quite provocative title they put on it called the gop war on voting. And it ended up being a really big story, a bigger story than i anticipated. A lot of people had the same reaction i had, which was outrage. How in the year 2011 is this still going on, are there still efforts to make it harder to vote . And then i realized after doing the article that i was one of the few people that are actually reporting on Voting Rights. So i actually knew something about this subject. And what happened is more states started passing new rexes, the law new restrictions, there were major mobilizations against these efforts, and it maim a became a major issue in the 2012 election. I covered it through the lens of who could and couldnt participate. And then after the election what we saw is the Supreme Court decided to hear a challenge to the Voting Rights act. And i was fascinated by this case, Shelby County v. Holder, and why the Voting Rights act was being challenged and what it did. And i started asking my friends and colleagues who i relied on as Voting Rights experts, what should i read to better understand the Voting Rights act . And to my surprise, there really budget a whole lot out there wasnt a whole lot out there about what the law did. There was a lot about the passing of the act, the dramatic events of selma, alabama, but there sunt a lot there wasnt a lot about the 50 years after that. And i knew at a time that Voting Rights were under attack, i knew the Supreme Court was likely to gut the Voting Rights act, and i knew we were headed towards the 50th anniversary, and i thought all of this could make for a really timely book. And because i had reported on this, maybe i had the expertise to do it. So im glad that i listened to myself [laughter] and i think, you know, it ended up, i think, being a really important story that needed to be told. Ari, tell us a little about just what the vra is and what it does and did, what its various sections did. Yeah. So the Voting Rights act is widely regarded as the most important piece of civil rights legislation are, but also just one of the most important pieces of legislation ever passed by the congress, because it really did work. And it worked to end decades of disenfranchisement in the south. So what it did is overnight it abolished literacy tests in the places like selma where it had disenfranchised africanamerican voters for decades. It authorized the attorney general to abolish the poll tax which was subsequently abolished. Then days after the act was passed, federal examiners were sent to the south to register voters in places like selma, which was a really revolutionary undertaking. We had a situation in selma where only 2 of africanamericans were registered before the vra. In mississippi, only 6 percent of africanamericans were registered. So doing this work was very difficult and very necessary, and what you saw was they eventually registered millions. So the registering of voters was a key part of it. The abolition of lliteras tests were a key part of it. Then federal officials stayed in the south to make sure that states complied with the law. And over a longer period of time what happened is those states with the worst histories of voting discrimination, places like alabama, mississippi and georgia and South Carolina, they had to approve their voting changes with the federal government to make sure that states complied, that we didnt have to pass the Voting Rights act of 1966 and 1967 and 1968. And so that enforcement mechanism, the fact that and this is what the Supreme Court rendered inoperative in 2013 the fact that the law could actually block discriminatory changes before they went into effect made the Voting Rights act so powerful over a period of five decades. And how many, how many times did laws get blocked by that, by the government . So just this one provision alone, section five, blocked over 3,000 discriminatory voting changes. And what i show in the book is, if people will take one thing away from the book, its that the fight over Voting Rights didnt end in 1965, that a whole new chapter of the struggle began, and states came up with more sophisticated ways to try to thwart the act. And they kept trying to implement voting changes that were discriminatory in nature, and the federal government kept stopping them. And this was a battle that continued really for five decades until 2013 when the Supreme Court removed that critically important protection. Every time the vra was renewed, it was under a republican president yeah. Nixon in 1970, ford in 75, reagan in 82 and george w. Bush in 2006. And every time it was renewed, there was a big ceremony at the white house where the president gave a speech about how wonderful the vra was. Were those president s all lying . [laughter] well, it is fascinating because i think many people think of the vra as a democratic and liberal piece of legislation because it was passed by Lyndon Johnson in the heyday of the great society, but republicans have been instrumental not just in the passage, but the reauthorization as well. Theres always been a strong bipartisan consensus for the Voting Rights act in congress. And whats interesting is the Voting Rights act has been reauthorized four times even though many of those republican president s really did not want to reauthorize the act and tried very hard to subvert it. First, Richard Nixon with his southern strategy did not want to sign a reauthorization of the vra, he was forced to do so because of republican moderates pushing pack against him. Ronald reagan opposed it when it was passed, and his administration which im sure well talk about launched a broad counterrevolution against civil rights. But nonetheless, reagan was forced to sign the reauthorization of the vra because people like bob dole stood up to him. George w. Bush, another administration that actively worked to subvert the Voting Rights act, they even george bush had to sign this reauthorization, because you had republican members of Congress Like Jim Sensenbrenner of wisconsin who stood up and said this is a priority for us. So even though there have been republican efforts all throughout the years to try to gut this act, the congress historically has protected Voting Rights, and thats something that well talk about later which has really shifted to today. How, exactly, did these republican administrations and the officials they appointed try to subvert the act . What could they do . How did they try to do that . So maybe pick one administration yeah. Ill give you, ill give you one example early on that kind of shows what happened. So after the vra was passed, court upheld its constitutionally very quickly. So just to give a little bit of background, pretty much weeks after the act was passed states like South Carolina were already figuring out how they were going to challenge the constitutionality of it, and they appealed directly to the Supreme Court which is very rare. It almost never happens. And there was a twoday oral argument, one of the longest oral arguments in Supreme Court history. And, essentially, South Carolina and the other Southern States said that the federal government didnt have the power to regulate state voting changes and state voting procedures. And the Supreme Court said very clearly in an 81 decision that, yes, in fact, thats why the Voting Rights act was passed, precisely because the federal government needed to regulate state voting procedures to make sure that africanamericans and other minority groups werent disenfranchised. After the initial constitutionality was upheld, states started thinking of more sophisticated ways to subvert the power of the vra, and they tried to dilute the power of the emerging minority vote. And mississippi held a special legislative session in 1966, and they passed 13 election changes to try to weaken the power of the africanamerican vote. They gerrymandered political districts to prevent africanamericans from getting elected. They consolidated smaller black counties with larger white counties so that the white counties would remain in control. They made every election in multimember districts so that if you had a situation where a district was 60 white and 40 africanamerican and elected ten candidates, all ten candidates would be white. And this was a major reare structuring of its election restructuring of its election system. And these laws were challenged, and they were challenged before the Supreme Court and, basically, the argument was made by the Justice Department and by civil Rights Groups that the vote aring rights act Voting Rights act was supposed to regulate all of these new voting changes that were coming up. And mississippi said that the act only applied to registration, didnt apply to all these broader notions of representation. The Supreme Court, in a very influential 1969 case, allen v. State board of elections, said, yes, all of these voting changes have to be approved. Any election change has to be approved because the Voting Rights act is going to deal not just with the right to vote, but the power of the vote to guarantee that once you register, your vote actually means something. So that established section five of the act, the preclearance provision. And what happened is that was very controversial and almost immediately southern conservatives wanted to get rid of the requirement that states had to approve their voting changes with the federal government. So when Richard Nixon campaigned in 1968, he promised Strom Thurmond and all those southern conservatives who were supporting him that he was going to gut section five of the vra. Once he became president , thats exactly what he tried to do, and he failed in that effort, as i mentioned. The congress wouldnt allow the Nixon Administration to do that. But what we see is even after nixon loses that battle, there is still is a five decade effort to try to weaken that part of law that then succeeds this the Supreme Court in 2013. And what happened, what happened the other three times . Under ford, under ford, under reagan and under bush . And did it, did it get worse, and did the rationales change . Well, the interesting thing about the fact that the vra was reauthorized four times is that even though there were efforts to weaken it, every time it was reauthorized, the law actually emerged stronger. So in 1970 the vra was not only reauthorized for another five years, but the voting age was lowered to 18 for all federal elections and literacy tests were abolished nationwide. So the Voting Rights act quickly became the vehicle to expand Voting Rights for all americans, not just one session segment of the population. In 1975 the Voting Rights act was expanded to protect hispanics and other language minority groups. So it mandated bilingual ballots. Be trying to limit the effectiveness of the Voting Rights act and the congress overruled it in congress overruled that an administration overruled john roberts and you dont have to dump approved intentional discrimination you just have to show the intent of discrimination and that made the Voting Rights act much more powerful. And you saw a new people get elected people like john was the congressman. He was elected in 1987 after the reauthorization of the act. Then in 2006 there was again the efforts to try to god the act and not renew the dra but again it was rather iced for another 25 years by a vote of 3903033 in the house and 980 and the congress so this is something that despite all the opposition to the Voting Rights act its been strong every time its been renewed. Theres an intellectual movement against the dra and even despite the enormous majority in the either works for reagan or were appointed by reagan so you can draw direct line from emerging civil rights counterrevolution of the 1980s to the Supreme Court in the congress that we see today. You can draw direct line between the Supreme Court we have today and the 2000 election. This was an election that those 537 votes in florida nothing has ever been more overdetermined than that. I mean you can, the butterfly ballots, hanging chads all of that stuff but one factor that may have been bigger than all of those but was not much discussed but that i learned a lot about in your book was Voter Suppression essentially. What happened . So i think many people ive talked with who have read the book found this to be the most infuriating part of all of it. It was the excerpt that i run the nation was about florida 2000 they remained so relevant today but basically what florida did in the runup to two do 2000 election was to have them massive voter purge in florida was one of those days where felons couldnt vote. Exfelons could not vote so they made up this purge list that had tens of thousands of people they claimed were felons that were on the voting rolls and they said to county supervisors they had to purge the rolls. It turns out there was a 70 match between the felon database in the Voter Registration database sell your name could be Rick Hertzberg are and you ended up on this purge list. There was so much inaccurate data not only that but there is discriminate discriminatory in nature. When people showed up on election day and was told that they were wrongly labeled as felons and couldnt boast they were disproportionately africanamerican voters and what was determined after the election is 12,000 people were wrongly labeled as felons. That was 22 times bushes margin of victory so this set of bad president and the Civil Rights Commission looked into this in a Major Investigation after the election and they found that this voter purge likely violated the Voting Rights act. This is so significant because many republicans learned the unfortunate lesson that small manipulations in the electoral process could make a big difference in close elections. This led to a new waive of Voter Suppression and led to george w. Bush becoming president and his Administration Working to subvert the vra but name two justices to the Supreme Court john roberts and sam alito. If you look at what happened after the election in man by the name of ted cruz at other guy you made of heard of john roberts to the clerks with as a clerk for Justice Rehnquist who was the most are surfers voting civil rights when he was appointed to the court. And so florida is important not because of the precedent it set but because john roberts, ted cruz job push all of these people are still with us today and these are not the leaders of the conservative party. Who is Abigail Thernstrom . Why was she a surprising kind of person to find playing the role she did and what was that role . Sure, so abaco thernstrom was a former liberal who became a conserved intellectual and really lead the intellectual case against the vra. She was the neoconservative view of the Voting Rights counterrevolution so there were states rights conservatives in places like mississippi who never were that crazy about civil rights but then there are people who supported civil rights but to leave the Civil Rights Movement have those lost its way after the 1960s when things like affirmative action busted quotas what became known as majority minority districts. They found the Voting Rights act was meant to register voters and wasnt meant that minorities would that are normally disenfranchised should be elected. It was supposed to lead to the election of president obama and all of these john lewis and edgar youngin all the people that have served throughout the last 50 years with distinction. But her arguments were influential in new critics emerging and her critique of the vra was known as colorblind as this idea that you shouldnt classify based on race which sounds very simple and has an intellectual lured to it. This influenced john roberts and so when Antonin Scalia makes the argument in the 2013th Voting Rights case that the vra said lead to a perpetuation of racial entitlement to very shocking statement he is saying in the most blunt ways a version of abaco thernstroms critique of the vra. That is a surprise. The neoconservative of converging doing damage to the era. Lets talk about Shelby County verses holder. What was the logic of back . What was the logic the court use for that decision and exactly what did they invalidate . What the Supreme Court did in this decision is the start down the formula that determines which states had to approve their voting change with the government so essentially they said yes they could still theoretically approve your voting changes but no states were covered so they took this preclearance requirement the most important part of the vra and turned into a zombie. What john roberts argued in his decision has 54 majority decision which is the comedy of this culmination of history changed since 1965 we had a black present a black mayor in places like salama alabama but voting had not changed. What i think john roberts missed i think you miss a lot of things in this decision but what i think he most notably messed with that number one the progress that was made was because of the bloody rights act in and the second thing he missed was that despite all of this progress that has been a five decade attempt to subvert the vra in the barriers to the ballot box were not eliminated in 65 and in the 2012 election as i mentioned earlier there was the explosion of Voter Suppression efforts of john roberts said we needed the Voting Rights act the least at the moment we needed it the most in the past three decades to stop things like voter i. D. Laws and cuts to early voting and voter purges. So there was a strange dissonance when i sat in the corner a strange dissonance because id spent an entire election morning on Voter Suppression efforts and then i heard chief justice of the Supreme Court say everything is changed since 1965. So i think roberts had one reading of history and most generous reading of history in terms of its progress while ignoring all of the disturbing history that emerged in the five decades after the vra. If your book as a hero i guess it would have to be john lewis. He was there at the beginning and he is still there. Tell us, you got to know him in the course of doing the book. Tell us about him as a person how you got to know him and what you think about him. One of the coolest parts of the book was getting to interview people like john lewis and getting to sit down with them for long periods of time and not just what john lewis the civil rights activists from the 60s, lawyers, politicians and people have been there offer up a struggle. I see bob zoellner who worked for sncc talking to be polite while the surreal highlight and congressman lewis so many people would object to the sub Rights Movement to do other things. Stokely carmichael moved to africa and Bob Moses Topp but john lewis remained involved in the fight for five decades. He remained involved after selma alabama. He led a group called the Voter Education program at a time when no one was doing this work into it when it was forgotten to keep the movement alive. He was involved in the 1980s when he won election to Martin Luther kings hometown in atlanta and andrew young was the first africanamerican elected in the south since reconstruction and john lewis replaced andrew young ultimately in the congress. When lewis was elected to congress i was shocked to learn there were only two africanamerican members of the congress from the south before lewis was elected. Mickey leland from texas and harold ford senior from tennessee so bare that was this unbelievable underrepresentation of people and john lewis became conscious of the congress. What interested me so much about lewis was here he was five decades after the passage of the Voting Rights act fighting this all over again sending the Supreme Court and watching as the cheap justice in the five judges guided his lifes work and what he nearly died for. I wanted to ask lewis how that felt and why he remained involved. And what he is doing today. I wanted to try to talk about the counterrevolution to Voting Rights which obviously is very distressing to a lot of people and its very distressing today but i also wanted to talk about people like john lewis and so many people who are the Unsung Heroes of the Voting Rights act and who did democratize this country. We were not a democracy before the Voting Rights act and for all of our flaws today and their many flaws where are far more Perfect Union because of that law. What is left of the vra now . Section 5 was struck down and can you repeat what you said about section by being a zombie . Section 5 booster struck down with a bank shot . The formula to determine which states were covered with struck down. The congress could draw a new formulas for covering states and that could lead to states changing their Voting Rights once again. This argument is frequently made him one of the reasons why the vra was upheld as constitutional and it was challenged with the fact that it was targeted. John roberts was turning it on its head. It only applies to certain states that the reason why it was constitutional is because it only applied to certain states. To suggest that it did would be very naive. What that decision did was it took away the most important protection the government had and what we are seeing in the wake of that decision is states that had struck laws that were blocked by texas and the voter i. D. Law went into effect a month after the decision. North carolina passed a sweeping host of voting restrictions and eliminated same day voting registration. They required strict voter i. D. The eliminated preregistration for 16 and 17yearold something that was passed as a civic lesson to get younger people involved in the political process. North carolina had very, very good election laws previously and essentially this piece of legislation is one bill and repealed almost all of them. Texas and North Carolina were striking case studies of the fact that Voter Suppression still exists. Louise on the 2014th election was the first president ial election pose Shelby County were thousands of people were disenfranchised by these laws. The predictions of people would be harmed in fact came true and now we are entering the 2016 election which is going to be the first president ial election 50 years of the full protections Voting Rights act. Everyone should be on alert for what would happen in 2016 without the vra being as strong as it once was. Its like getting rid of your umbrella in a rainstorm because hey im not getting wet. That was a metaphor that Ruth Bader Ginsburg used to describe it. Or could be like striking down the drug act because drugs are pretty pure these days and we dont need this. The idea that did the 15th amendment, Say Something about the 15 amendment which was the one that guaranteed the both supposedly and its enforcement provision. This is kind of out of the blue. That states would be deprived of congressional representation if they suppress to voting. Is that dead clause in the 15th amendment and did that come up in these cases . That may have been section 2 of the 14th amendment. Perhaps people should start coming up. If you have questions come on up and stand at the microphone but we will get to you shortly. If i could say a little bit about the pushback we are seeing and some possible solutions to this problem. One of the things is that laws are being challenged in states like texas and North Carolina under other parts of the vra. The difference with section 2 and the reason its hard to challenge section 2 is the burden of truth is on the plaintiffs of those that are facing discrimination have to show the voting changes discriminatory. This is a lengthy process in a difficult standard they have to prove under section 5 of the Voting Rights act and you had to show the voting change would lead minority voters were sought in section 2 theres a long task of the court has to look at so if something of a cumbersome provision but unless its being used to challenge laws what we saw as an Appeals Court in texas did strike down texas voter i. D. Law under section 2 of the Voting Rights acts of the Voting Rights act is not but i do think it has weakened and thats why we have seen legislation in congress. There was a new bill introduced by john lewis and Patrick Leahy in the senate called the Voting Rights advancement act of 2015 that would restore the requirements that states would have to change the federal government faced a more recent data so it took roberts to look at more recent Voting Rights authorizations to cover states and they also said we are going to look at new forms of discrimination and we are going to cover those as well. The last thing i will say in terms of what we could be doing is as more and more states and make it harder other states and making it easier to vote and expand voter access in d. C. Is one of those places. What we are seeing in california and vermont and oregon is that their efforts to try to expand Voter Participation by doing things like automatic Voter Registration where if you have a contact with the dmv just like you and rolled you are automatically registering to vote and if you do that nationwide that will lead to 50 million more people being registered. There are a lot of things on a commonsense basis. I found it to be very sad and shameful that on that historic anniversary the moderators that fox never asked the candidates a question about the Voting Rights act and never bothered to mention it. If we are not going to talk about Voting Rights act on the 50th anniversary of the loss when we going to talk about it. We should add that because cspan is filming please try to keep your questions as brief as possible. I take paternal if i may say so pride that we produced ari berman. You mentioned the group including roberts and scalias who produced the legal philosophical. We can blame it all on sicily and it seems to me you mentioned Abigail Burns sherman who is a social scientist. If you look into her background you will find a certain attachment to another disappointing revolution. But at any rate do you have a picture of the milieu the social origins and the concerns that produce these people . Why is this attachment to counterrevolution so to speak . I tell it is copper and simply as i can but people like john roberts were a product. They came of age politically in the time and there was this back lash to civil rights laws of the 1960s in the back lash took a few different forms. I think there was a backlash against the Voting Rights act is republicans feuded as voting for democrats. They were wellintentioned but they went astray when they started prescribing remedies or representation for things like majority minority districts that i do think that was part of it and i also think race was an issue here and i think states rights conservatives realize people like William Rehnquist who ministered literacy test. Brown verses board of education was wrongly decided. You cant read that. There was a rebranding of states rights conservatism into colorblind conservatism that it was more respectable and Nathan Glaser a harvard sociologist who was one of the leading opponents of colorblindness i asked you feel uncomfortable when the Reagan Administration took your argument and he said i did feel uncomfortable. I felt like there was an element that this was a southern strategy and there was an element of race two is set to ignore the point in our society where black lives matter everything thats going on Ferguson Baltimore charleston we realize that racism still exists and we havent solved this problem we need to talk honestly about the fact that race has been an issue for a lot of these people that have opposed the vra. Hi my name is dan. Im a reading or im just a reader of the nation that i have a twopart question. First of all thank you so much. I havent read your book so this is a basic question that you may be answered in your book. How was it that this law would need to be reauthorized so many times and it seems like for different periods of time that it was in the second part of that is since it did need to be rubberized and was reauthorized relatively recently before the 2013 decision how did the Roberts Court justified his decision in the face of recent legislative intent . Two very good questions. Lyndon johnson had to move quickly. American public was outraged by selma, profoundly outrage and we did one another so much happened months later or years later so they needed to pass the Voting Rights act quickly. They needed to make it as tough as possible. Usually legislation is watered down as it works its way through congress. The vra is almost entirely intact and one of the reasons johnson was able to get into congress that quickly was because some of its most stringent requirements like the requirement that you had to get your voting changes approved for tempore so the fact that they were temporary allowed number one johnson to get passage for quickly but number two accords were able to rule a constitutional because they said listen there is a record for this. The congress is look at it and they are going to decide when voting discrimination ends. Its interesting the law would give congress does discretion the Supreme Court overruled its discretion and basically what john roberts said was the congress couldnt be trusted anymore and Antonin Scalia said this most notably where he said the Voting Rights act, isnt that great . Is going to vote against that and suggested as i mentioned earlier has led to a perpetuation of racial entitlement to such an extent that the congress would never not vote to reauthorize it. So i think the strong bipartisan consensus became a reason for the Supreme Court to god it. The five Supreme Court justices thought they were only brave enough to step in and Anthony Kennedy said so i think the court felt like they were doing the heavy lifting in congress. Hi. I am bob zoellner and i worked with nick and john lewis and i worked with reverend barber and the movement in North Carolina and i want to thank you very much for this masterwork. You are a real snake guy. That happens a lot snake guy. I do have a specific question and its not to force it off on you. The black lives Matter Movement and ferguson in charleston and all that we focus on pinch points where we can get someone and convince someone to do the right thing or we can compel them to do the right thing. What are the pinch points . Where would the young people go now . Where were the activists go to make their nonviolent protest . You set me up well bob because i would urge people to Pay Attention to whats happening in North Carolina where we have seen the most dramatic renewal of the Civil Rights Movement. Workgroups realize was that a month after the spring court go to the er at vra they had to dramatize what was happening in dramatize it in such a way that they had to go down to the legislature and get arrested because people would understand that people were getting arrested for a cause and it was a cause that everyone could get behind. There were so many attacks in North Carolina on a variety of levels so i was able to get so many people riled up and the fact that the Voting Rights connected because people realized if you undermine the right to vote you undermine the most core ability people to do something about the problems they face. Martin luther king said that voters in the ballgame but it gets you into the arena. If you dont have that you dont have the most basic prerequisite for a change. I do think we are at a hopeful moment in a way and that there has been a research a research on civil rights more broadly and people are realizing some of these lessons are applicable to today and people are realizing the things that we took for granted like the vra how important they were and how important they are. And how badly they need it now. My name is scott and i have read question. You talk a little bit i think it was Abigail Finch correct me if im mispronouncing a wasnt the intent and i wonder what you think about the other dynamic that was happening with the Bush Administration in the early 90s where they were advocating and promoting the exact opposite of that intellectual argument. What do you think, why is the one hand doing this and the other hand doing that if that makes sense . This is a complicated issue and one that i try to deal with new wants in my book which is to say there were elements in the Republican Party you mentioned the first Bush Administration that wanted to draw districts that would benefit an africanamerican in latino candidates because it will put them in one district that would mean the surrounding districts would become wider and more conservative and more republican. It was for political benefits and you could argue it is hurt the Democratic Party and its hurt minority political power over time. The same time there was an unfair representation particularly in the south in the 60s 70s and 80s as i mentioned earlier in 1987 there were two africanamericans from the south and congress where they were 25 of the population had 5 of the elected seats so you had do something about this problem of representation. So many people were left out of elected office so it even if there was a political benefit to Republican Party for drawing these districts it didnt meet the districts didnt need to be drawn. One of the things thats happened more recently as districts there were 55 africanamerican or latino have become 65 latino because republicans have packed more and more voters into fewer districts to try to increase their political power. I think thats wrong so when i talk interestingly talked to africanamericans politicians in the south they say drop the district at 45 so we have a chance to be elected but dont drive at 60 or 70 of our power is weakened. Of all the issues in the book this is the most complicated and i dont think theres an easy answer. I think some of the critiques that are in strum made about majority districts may have been valid. I think her brother could treat in the vra was misplaced. Thank you. Jim behling. I wanted to ask you a bout a specific elected official, marion barry in washington d. C. If you look at him he was kind of a mixed bag. Depending on your political background you might see him as a pretty good guy with a few flaws are a pretty bad guy who is good once in a while. But you know he is an example of somebody basically elected via black voters. What is your take on this . Will i mean i dont really have a take on it because it is not someone i write about in the book so i dont want to not answer a question that doesnt relate to what ive covered. Ill bet bob has an answer for that one. I can give you quick one on marion barry. He was one of the early chairman of sncc and when he came to washington d. C. He wasnt supported by the poor people at all. He was supported by the intelligentsia but he took policies that built the black middle class that changed the face of washington d. C. In many ways in favor of poor people and working people and especially young people. That they have never forgot that at all so that was when he was finally known as mayor for life. I want to push you ovell more on this question of the majority minority districts. Not too much longer though. [laughter] with that we got . Five minutes. Okay make it quick. All right. It seems as if one of the ironic result is that of that kind of manipulation and the packing of black voters into single district has been a Political Polarization worse than existed before you so essentially you have a black democratic already and a white Republican Party and you have the former white moderates outnumbered and unable to swing districts. It actually contributes to this whole extreme white ring takeover of the republic and party and that seems like a profound irony. E i mean i think its a profound irony and two things can be true at the same time. He can betray that these districts were drawn in some ways to benefit the Republican Party that they have led to polarization that over time they become more and more extreme in terms of how republicans tell us some after the 2010 election but its also true you can recognize that people like john lewis like mel mass incarceration is the Voting Rights issue and we needlessly disenfranchise millions of people in this country and it was unfortunate that we saw states after the 2010 election make it harder for exfelons to vote as opposed to giving them their Voting Rights back in states like florida. I think far too many states still do this and i think any sort of Racial Justice platform is to deal with the problem of mass incarceration and felonies read this is the one issue where there is an interesting bipartisan movements radio card people like rand paul say that we should be giving Voting Rights to nonviolent exoffenders and i think thats great. Even the Koch Brothers of talk about in my question is why not go further . Why stop there . If you are willing to give the

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