The Persistent Racist Accusations of the NC NAACP and its Continued Attempts to Frustrate a Voter ID Law in North Carolina | Eastern North Carolina Now

    On November 6, an amendment to the North Carolina constitution requiring voters to present a photo identification for voting in person (the "Voter ID" amendment) passed with 55 percent support. The language of that amendment, per House Bill 1092 (H.B. 1092) which gave rise to the amendment, states: "Every person offering to vote in person shall present photo identification before voting in the manner prescribed by law."

    The next step in the process, of course, is to back the amendment up with appropriate legislation. The NC General Assembly officially began that task when it reconvened in Raleigh this week.

    With this in mind, we can predict what the North Carolina NAACP, other black activist groups, and Democrats/liberals will do - challenge any proposed legislation as too strict, too burdensome, and too discriminatory on black voters. Any law will be challenged as an orchestrated attempt to disenfranchise black voters at the ballot. It has already filed a motion for Summary Judgement to declare all four of the adopted amendments void as being the product of an illegal general assembly (The NC NAACP holds that the election of the 2017-2018 General Assembly body was the product of racially-motivated gerrymandering and hence illegal).

    On November 15, Reverend T. Anthony Spearman, the head of the NC NAACP held a press conference and outlined the group's opposition to a photo ID law. He said: "The North Carolina NAACP calls on all people of good will to attend the 'All Roads Lead to Raleigh' rally on November 27 as we prepare for a usurper general assembly which came to power illegally through racially-discriminatory maps and which will meet in Raleigh in a lame-duck special session to make a final effort to enshrine discrimination in our laws."

    He said the proposed amendments which were on the ballot on November 6 were "misleading and unlawful" and "forced upon North Carolina" by an illegal general assembly.


    He continued:

    "We will continue to fight the anti-democracy racist Photo ID law and its attempt to suppress black votes. A Photo ID discriminates against blacks, Hispanics, people of color, immigrants, and veterans. These people cannot be disenfranchised from their rightful access to the ballot box. Democracy requires that they have access to the ballot box.

    History teaches us, and our hearts know it to be true - morally and constitutionally and practically that North Carolina is trying once again to suppress the votes of black people. I speak to our history......

    Even before the ink was dry on President Grant's clear signature on the 15th constitutional amendment on March 30, 1870, the slaveholders of North Carolina and the other ten treasonous states who declared war on the red, white, and blue flag and its government, had met in their lily-white caucuses to design schemes to deny and abridge, to suppress and gerrymander the black vote power down to nothing. Like today, in many NC counties, black voters were in the majority and anyone who could count could understand that if people voted by their racial category, the white man was going to lose. Like today, Mr. Berger and Mr. Moore hide in their lily-white caucus in our people's house, and plan, with all their tricks, how to ram thru legislation and over-ride vetoes. Their motivations are clear. Their intent is to intimidate, trick, and confuse poor black voters.... "

    He continued:

    "The 15th Amendment states clearly - 'The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." House Speaker Moore, Senator Berger... What is it about the 15th Amendment's clear guarantee that you don't understand? Perhaps we should hang the 15th Amendment high on a banner outside the lily-white caucus room in which you scheme up your scams. Will you have your police arrest us for holding up the Constitution, which you purport to love? The US Supreme ruled twice, in cases our organization brought, that the Photo ID legislation that you all passed (obviously talking to the NC General Assembly Republicans) was intentionally racist, 'targeting voters of color with surgical precision.' (quoting from the decision of the 4th Circuit's 2016 opinion). You have contemptuously ignored the court's ruling.

    The second sentence of the 15th Amendment is even more elementary than the first. It reads: 'The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.' In 1965, Congress authorized the Voting Rights Act and re-authorized it three times. Since last Tuesday, many believe the votes are there to pass the bill (the Photo ID bill) that was stalled in the house. Thank God. The House used every trick I the book to abridge, curtail, trick, suppress, supplant, scare, intimidate, humiliate, and violently kill people, characterize them as felons, frame them as felons, imprison them as felons, and create impossible barriers to register - such as finding and producing birth certificates when high proportions of older black voters today were born with midwives with no birth certificates at all.

    Even before the ink was dry on President Grant's clear signature on the 15th constitutional amendment, sore-loosing slaveholders began organizing a defeated confederate army into secret political societies. In North Carolina, not far from here, in Alamance County, Colonel Sanders, from Chapel Hill, shed his gray uniform and donned a silly-looking white sheet to ride with burning sticks. That being in the White House and Nazi groups were particularly upset when black and white neighbors came together and began challenging the fake history that glorifies the statues of Robert E. Lee. Perhaps it would be worthwhile to erect statues of Ulysses S. Grant across the South since many of our neighbors and students don't seem to know who won the war to abolish slavery......."

    Wow, what a mouthful of racism.... So much hatred oozing from his words.

    NOTE: Spearman was absolutely INCORRECT (and perhaps even intentionally misleading) in his claim that the US Supreme Court has ruled on the NC Voter ID law. The Supreme Court DECLINED to look at the law (see later).

    Well, at least we know now that the NAACP, with its extreme racist political position and its toxic, offensive, racist, and hate-filled rhetoric, is once again hoping to derail honest intentions to ensure honesty and integrity in North Carolina elections and once again framing the initiative (voted on by a majority of the voters in NC) as one pursued by Republicans for the purpose of intentionally disenfranchising blacks. Its intent is clear - to fight a restrictive Photo-Voter ID law.

    And keeping its word, the NC NAACP held its protest beginning in the morning of November 27 (as the special lame-duck session of the NC General Assembly met to take care of business) on the Bicentennial Mall, headlined by its head, Rev. Spearman, and Rev. William Barber. In keeping with his rhetoric of November 15, Spearman shouted these words: "Senator Berger, Speaker Moore, what is it about that clear guarantee in the 15h Amendment that you cannot understand?"


    Spearman thinks the racially-divided South of the Jim Crow era and pre-Civil Rights era has never ended. He needs a reality check. Sure, racism existed for a long time in our country. No one can deny that and no one does. But to think that it exists on a level even close to what it did back during the Jim Crow era and even up until the early 1960's is sheer dishonesty. Although it took far too long for blacks to be recognized with full civil rights, the federal government not only stepped in to solve the problem but it went far beyond, granting all kinds of special protections, government over-sight, court orders, and affirmative action programs to remedy generations of past discrimination. Every race was discriminated at some point in our 20th century history (including Italians, Irish, Chinese, Middle-Easterners - all facing employment practices that excluded them from being hired. All faced horrible stereotypes which translated into the government intentionally limiting their numbers or banning them through our US immigration laws). Yet only one race has received and continues to receive special protection. Just look at all the federal and state laws that protect blacks and punish employers, schools, public accommodations, etc who attempt to discriminate against them. There are even laws that make it particularly easy to sue on the basis of racial discrimination. (When whites sue for discrimination, including when they are discriminated against in their application to universities in favor of blacks who are far less qualified, they are told that there is no law that protects them and hence, those schools are given great latitude and deference as to what they choose to do in reviewing and accepting applicants). Only one race believes it holds the copyright on discrimination and disenfranchisement.

    Writer and journalist Rachel Lu (of The Federalist) is tired what she sees as constant, unfounded accusations of racism from the left. She explains: "Liberals need racist foes to vanquish. Most of the time they have to resort to finding them where they obviously aren't there." What I think she means is that accusations of racism by Democrats and other leftist groups are means to an end.

    We see how racial discrimination has been dealt with in employment and public accommodations, so let's look at how race influences things these days in other areas that really matter:

    A 2005 study by Princeton sociologists Thomas J. Espenshade and Chang Y. Chung compared the effects of Affirmative Action on racial and special groups at three highly selective private research universities, including Harvard University. The data below, which is from the study, represents admissions disadvantage and advantage in terms of SAT points (on the old 1600-point scale):

    Whites (non-recruited athlete/non-legacy status): 0 (control group)

    Blacks: +230

    Hispanics: +185

    Asians: -50

    Recruited athletes: +200

    Legacies (children of alumni): +160

    In other words, whatever the SAT test score that a white applicant received, the university judges that student and weighs his or her application exactly on that score. Whatever SAT score a black applicant received, the university automatically adds 230 additional points to the score before that applicant's application is reviewed and judged and compared to other applicants. Hispanic applicants have their SAT scores upgraded and recruited athletes as well (and legacies, but we all kinda suspected that). Universities (again, at least the top private universities which were the target of the study) punish Asian applicants by automatically subtracting points from their earned SAT scores before reviewing their applications.

    In 2009, Espenshade and researcher Alexandria Walton Radford, in their book No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal, examined data on students applying to college in 1997 and calculated that Asian-Americans needed nearly perfect SAT scores of 1550 to have the same chance of being accepted at a top private university as whites who scored 1410 and African Americans who got 1100.

    After controlling for grades, test scores, family background (legacy status), and athletic status (whether or not the student was a recruited athlete), Espenshade and Radford found that whites were three times, Hispanics six times, and blacks more than 15 times as likely to be accepted at a US university as Asian Americans.


    It's hard for most Americans to understand the notion that blacks are insidiously discriminated today in American society.

    President Obama signed two federal orders, one in 2011 and another in 2016, which strengthened the ability to use race-related affirmative action to enroll in elementary and secondary education, as well as an Executive Order to require schools to ease off on punishing blacks in their school discipline policies (Obama assumed that since blacks were disproportionately the target of high school disciplinary action, the policies or the school administrators must be racist]. President Trump rescinded the federal orders.

    The NC Voter Integrity Project, in talking about cases of voter fraud in North Carolina, recalls the incident where a black woman voted multiple times. No one wanted to say anything or call her out on it because they were afraid it would create a scene. Finally, on the third or fourth time voting, one poll worker finally questioned her. She immediately started screaming "They are trying to disenfranchise my vote!" She said she was voting for her black neighbor. The poll officials essentially did nothing; she was told to come back with her neighbor. As it turned out, she HAD voted multiple times, she LIED and DECEIVED the poll officials, the poll officials CHOSE to look the other way and ignore the fact that she voted illegally, and poll officials DECLINED to go to the officials about what she had illegally done. Once that brave poll worker left, she could continue to keep voting. (The last attempt at voting, she gave the name of her neighbor, a man). Imagine if a white man had claimed: "I'm white and they are trying to stop me from voting." What do you think the outcome would be? And people wonder why a photo ID is absolutely necessary.