Georgia wants minorities to have 3/5ths of a vote

Let's turn Georgia into 3/5ths of a state

Georgia’s new law limiting voting rights is a frontal assault on the citizenship of its Black and Brown people.  The state of Georgia is telling its minority citizens that they don’t count as much as other citizens because the new law is making it harder for them to exercise their right to vote.  Jim Crow isn’t cloaked in a sheet and hood any more.  He’s wearing a suit and tie, and all the evidence you need is in the photo of Governor Brian Kemp signing the bill into law.  Did you see any Black or Brown faces?  Any women?  I didn’t.  Georgia’s anti-democratic new voting law is a white law passed by a white Republican legislature and signed by a white Republican governor.

It is Jim Crow in the 21st Century, as President Joe Biden said last week.  Georgia should be treated the same way North Carolina was treated in 2016 when the Republican-dominated legislature passed the so-called “bathroom bill” which required transgender people to use bathrooms, locker rooms and showers corresponding to the sex on their birth certificates rather than to their gender identity.  Boycotts were announced by the NCAA, which withdrew tournament games from the state, and the NBA, which canceled its All-Star basketball game, which had been previously awarded to the city of Charlotte.  Major corporations announced they would refuse to schedule conventions in the state, and PayPal announced it would cancel building a facility that would have added $2.2 billion to the state’s economy.  In all, it was estimated that the “bathroom bill” would have cost the state as much as $4 billion over a dozen years, according to an Associated Press analysis.

Facing such a powerful hit to its economy, North Carolina repealed the bill a year later.  The NCAA and NBA withdrew their boycotts and corporations announced they would reschedule conventions they had cancelled. The boycotts worked.

College and professional sports pump hundreds of millions into the economies of states.  Major League Baseball set a good example when they announced cancellation of this year’s All-Star game, which had been scheduled to take place this summer in Atlanta.  The game was estimated to bring more than $100 million into the economy of Atlanta, according to a Cobb County tourism official in an interview with CNN last week.

The NCAA should follow suit by excluding the states of Georgia and Texas from consideration as locations for future “Final Four” basketball tournaments.  They should also exclude Georgia and Texas from consideration for the College Football Playoff Series and National Championship game.  The NFL should pull Atlanta and Dallas and Houston out of consideration for future Super Bowls. 

Major corporations like Delta Airlines and Coca Cola have already announced opposition to the Georgia voting restriction law.  Last Thursday, American Airlines and Dell computers, both headquartered in Texas, announced their opposition to proposed voter restriction legislation in that state.  On Friday, more than 170 major American companies signed a letter calling on states not to enact laws making it harder for their citizens to vote.

Now come the corporate boycotts.  It isn’t going to be easy because it’s harder to boycott multiple states than it was to boycott the state of North Carolina alone for its anti LGBQT legislation.  But major American corporations should make it clear that they don’t want any part of these anti-democratic states that pass laws limiting voting access to minority voters. 

It’s not a perfect analogy, but it’s similar to the so-called “three-fifths compromise” at the time of our nation’s founding, counting enslaved people as 3/5th of a citizen for purposes of apportionment in congress and taxation.  The states of Georgia and Texas essentially think their Black and Brown citizens should have three-fifths of a vote.  We can respond by boycotting any corporation that supports these laws like Home Depot and Chic-fil-A.  Entertainers should refuse to schedule concerts in Atlanta and Dallas and Houston and Fort Worth.  Motion picture companies should refuse to shoot movies and television series in states that restrict voting.

If they keep trying to turn Black and Brown people into three-fifths of a citizen, then we should turn every state that limits voting rights into three-fifths of a state.  Make them pay, and pay big.  It’s a sad and sick fact that we’ve been fighting the battle over voting rights since the Civil War, and it’s not over.  But North Carolina shows it’s a war that can be won if we make their racism and sexism and xenophobia expensive enough.