Of voting, watermelons, the Confederacy, and 'freeing' some slaves in South Carolina

Filing this one under “No This Muthafucka/Motherfucker Didn’t.” Ari Berman’s recent offering in The Nation calls our attention to the current—and historic—climate in South Carolina around voting and people of color. Across the country but with special zeal in the South voter ID laws have sprung up to suppress voting by the populace, African Americans specifically, and they have faced court challenges. The proceedings of these challenges have revealed rather interesting tidbits. Like this email to South Carolina State Representative Alan Clemmons, sponsor of South Carolina’s voter ID bill, from a Republican supporter named Ed Koziol:

“ … if African Americans were offered a $100 award for obtaining voter ID, ‘you would see how fast they got voter ID cards with their picture. It would be like a swarm of bees going after a watermelon.’ ”

Black folks and watermelons. Yes, that muthafucka/motherfucker did say that.

Fighting white supremacy is tiring. It can be so tiring that losing focus can be real easy. Super easy. This is the headline of Berman’s piece, along with the subheading:

63,756 Reasons Racism Is Still Alive in South Carolina

That’s the number of minority registered voters who could be blocked from the polls by the state’s new voter ID law.

I take issue with Berman only in that those 63,000+ folks are not the reasons racism is alive in South Carolina. White supremacy is the reason racism is alive in South Carolina. It is the reason 20 percent of Donald Trump’s supporters disagree with President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation that ‘freed the slaves’ in the states that were “in rebellion against the United States,” but not in those states or parishes in Louisiana that remained in the Union.