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2021-03-27 Home Front: Politix

Will Bunch: Georgia governor signed a voter suppression law under a painting of a slave plantation

[Philadelphia Inquirer] Sometimes America’s legacy of white supremacy is hiding in plain sight, literally. When Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed a hastily passed voter suppression law that many are calling the new, new Jim Crow on Thursday night, surrounded by a half-dozen white men, he did so in front of a painting of a plantation where more than 100 Black people had been enslaved.

The fitting symbolism is somehow both shocking and unsurprising. In using the antebellum image of the notorious Callaway Plantation — in a region where enslaved Black people seeking freedom were hunted with hounds — in Wilkes County, Ga., as the backdrop for signing a bill that would make it a crime to hand water to a thirsty voter waiting on Georgia’s sometimes hours-long voter lines, the GOP governor was sending a clear message about race and human rights in the American South.

The portrait of the plantation was the starkest reminder of Georgia’s history of white racism that spans slavery, Jim Crow segregation, the rebirth of the modern Ku Klux Klan, and today’s voter purges targeting Black and brown voters — but it wasn’t the only one. At the very moment that Kemp was signing the law with his all-white posse, a Black female Georgia lawmaker — Rep. Park Cannon — who’d knocked on the governor’s door in the hopes of watching the bill signing was instead dragged away and arrested by state troopers, in a scene that probably had the Deep South’s racist sheriffs of yesteryear like Bull Connor or Jim Clark smiling in whatever fiery hellhole they now inhabit.

Posted by Besoeker 2021-03-27 00:00|| || Front Page|| [11132 views ] Top

#1 The portrait of the plantation was the starkest reminder of Georgia’s history of white racism....

Yet people continue to move to Georgia each year by the thousands.

Posted by Besoeker 2021-03-27 00:11|| 2021-03-27 00:11|| Front Page Top

#2

A century and a half ago; just like it was yesterday ? You got to be a squirrel to even think this way.

Posted by Greatly Thrilling2065 2021-03-27 00:26|| 2021-03-27 00:26|| Front Page Top

#3 The author of the article is a truely lost soul, what the hell are you writing about ? America moved on, way passed you 50 years ago...get real Bub, you are not even in the 20th century, let alone the 21st Century.

It ain't 1961, its 2021...

Posted by Greatly Thrilling2065 2021-03-27 00:36|| 2021-03-27 00:36|| Front Page Top

#4 Yeah, funny how baseball is all white, and just the other day I saw different water fountains and some poor chap being directed to the back of the bus....oh, crap, I woke up late!

Posted by Clem 2021-03-27 00:41|| 2021-03-27 00:41|| Front Page Top

#5 The only thing that has changed is that Democrats' plantations harvest votes instead of cotton.

Posted by Chunky Threns3935 2021-03-27 02:03|| 2021-03-27 02:03|| Front Page Top

#6 Such a ridiculously obvious redirect. Pay no attention to those absentee ballots... or the strange man harvesting them ... or the unmarked white van arriving at the counting center after the statutory end to the voting season ... or the 'everyone out of the pool haha" farcical shooing away of Repub observers ... or the clownshow suitcase yanked from under a table after the GOPpers wiz gone ...

No let's talk about stuff that happened in the days before Darwin

Posted by Glomock Fillmore7316 2021-03-27 02:12|| 2021-03-27 02:12|| Front Page Top

#7 People who can't get an ID shouldn't vote.

Posted by g(r)omgoru 2021-03-27 02:21|| 2021-03-27 02:21|| Front Page Top

I'd like to suggest a 'mobile ballot drop-off box.'

Posted by Besoeker 2021-03-27 02:28|| 2021-03-27 02:28|| Front Page Top

#9 Don't forget that the White House was built during the period of slavery? That the current occupant comes from a former slave state? And was friends with known Klansman (a former senator from WV)?

Posted by Procopius2k 2021-03-27 07:58|| 2021-03-27 07:58|| Front Page Top

#10 You can't help but notice that any mention of the 150th, and now 160th anniversary of the war between the states and subsequent battle anniversaries are wholly neglected. All that courage in the face of unimaginable bloodletting. The immensity of sacrifice both to seceed and hold the Union together. Nah, nothing to see there better to fantasize.

Posted by Cesare 2021-03-27 09:55|| 2021-03-27 09:55|| Front Page Top

#11 @ #9 - The "Exalted Cyclops"!

Posted by Clem 2021-03-27 10:05|| 2021-03-27 10:05|| Front Page Top

#12 You're damn right. We want voter suppression. We want to suppress the votes of dead people, fictitious characters and illegal aliens.

Posted by Abu Uluque 2021-03-27 13:17|| 2021-03-27 13:17|| Front Page Top

#13 New Woke '1619' History:
American Revolution was fought to preserve slavery.
The Civil War was fought to preserve white supremacy.
The civil rights movement was an evil plot to make war on young black men.

Posted by Unolulet Clunk9314 2021-03-27 14:12|| 2021-03-27 14:12|| Front Page Top

#14 Appears you've nailed it UC. You'll have a very bright future in democratic politics if you can somehow integrate climate change.

Posted by Besoeker 2021-03-27 14:17|| 2021-03-27 14:17|| Front Page Top

03:23 Besoeker
02:05 Grom the Affective
02:04 Grom the Affective
01:26 49 Pan
00:22 EMS Artifact
00:16 Skidmark