- This week’s Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Holder overturned Section 4(b) of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which mandated federal oversight of changes in voting procedure in jurisdictions that have a history of using a “test or device” to impede enfranchisement. Here is one example of such a test, used in Louisiana in 1964.
After the end of the Civil War, would-be black voters in the South faced an array of disproportionate barriers to enfranchisement. The literacy test—supposedly applicable to both white and black prospective voters who couldn’t prove a certain level of education but in actuality disproportionately administered to black voters—was a classic example of one of these barriers.
I learned about this in school but all I was taught is that they used the literacy tests to prevent black people from voting, it didn't elaborate on how exactly that worked. I think I was left to assume black people at the time (closer to Amendment 15) were more likely to be illiterate or something. But this is even more evil. The questions are so insane, that even if you think you have it figured out, they're so vague that whoever is grading the test could just tell you you interpreted it wrong no matter how you answered it.
Yes, and to make matters even worse they were only given ten minutes to answer every question. It's amazing that this was legal a mere fifty years ago.
We've evolved so far since then. Now we just redraw your district and bundle minority slices of the population with majorities that live nowhere near them in order to rip their voices from the ballot box. You don't even have to fill out a form to be disenfranchised. Frictionless McOpression.
How long did you take? Also, how do you know you had the white answers? No, I didn't misspell that. Let's also face it: even if a black professor took that test, they'd find a way to flunk him. This wasn't passed through a Scantron: it was passed through crackers.
A straight Venn diagram. They didn't say it couldn't have more than one, it just said that it had to have one. What do you think it was supposed to be? I try not to over-read things like that. It's how I pass the drivers test every 8 years without studying. _C
Side note: Comments like this make me love Hubski, been laughing at just about all of them.
This is where the old "Paris in the the spring" came from? Wow. No wonder people hate honkies so much.
If there was a right answer at all, I'd guess the right answer was five overlapping circles with concyclic centers, because the five circles theorem shows up in a lot of old school geometry books; then the "part" is either the implicit sixth circle or the implicit pentagram.