Do you remember hearing about the controversial remarks by John Tanner, the Department of Justice's Chief of Voting about how voter id laws disenfrancise white people more than people of color? According to his logic, it's because the disparities in health care in this country mean that "minorities don't become elderly the way white people do: They die first". "So," he says, "anything that 'disproportionately impacts the elderly, has the opposite impact on minorities". He concludes that therefore white people are being more disenfrancised by voter id laws than are people of color.
Hmmm... stop. Rewind. Lemme see that move again, Slick! You lost me there...
Mr. Tanner was trying to use a sound argument: Namely, that white people tend to live longer than people of color because of the disparities in a white supremacist society means that white people tend to have better access to health care and such than do people of color. (It's all about economics! says the Marxist)
but wait! That's only half the story. There's a sleight of hand trick here:
It's true that structural racism affects people's life spans but people aren't automatically disenfranchised by virtue of their being elderly. They're disenfranchised by virtue of their being poor and elderly. Poor people are less likely to have IDs and to have the documents such as birth certificates needed in order to get those IDs. Why? Because of racism. People of color are more likely to be poor for exactly the same reason they're more likely to lack access to health care; because racism has very real economic consequences. And anyway voter disenfranchisement is not something the Department of Justice should be condoning!
I applaud you for recognizing the disparities in our system, Mr. Tanner, but wow, what a way to shed some murk on the subject!
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