In a 1998 U.S. Supreme Court case, Campbell v. Louisiana, the Court held that a defendant had the right to sue to overturn his indictment because no black person ever served as grand jury foreperson in Evangeline Parish, in which over 20% of registered voters are black.  Campbell, who was indicted for second-degree murder, was white.  He was accused of killing another man, who also was white.  Yet, he mainly appealed his indictment on the grounds that it violated his Fourteenth Amendment equal protection and due process rights.  Somehow, because of an alleged racist exclusion of a black American from serving in the role of foreperson, Campbell felt that the judicial process harmed him.

I remember at the time speaking to a coworker about the decision in the case.  The idea that Campbell had legal standing to sue seemed absurd to me.  While he did suffer the injury of being indicted, he did not suffer any injury on account of the foreperson being white.  My colleague felt differently.  He said it was a good idea to take a closer look at the case and at the process that was called into question.

The mere hint that racism was involved in the judicial process, no matter how tangential or irrelevant, was enough to cast the whole process as illegitimate, even if it resulted in a murderer being set free.

With voter ID laws, we have a similar situation.  Showing identification to a poll worker on Election Day to verify one’s identity before voting strikes most U.S. citizens as reasonable.  Given the possibility of another party casting a ballot in someone else’s name, showing identification is reasonable.  However, since many on the Left have effectively branded such an idea as racist, requiring that a voter verify his identity prior to voting is now seen as illegitimate.

The Left offers two reasons for the racism charge: (1) many black Americans do not have government-issued identification cards and (2) Republicans want to make it harder for black Americans – roughly 90% of whom support the Democratic Party – to vote.

My response to the first charge is that about 75% of blacks have IDs.  Of those who do not, identification cards are generally easy to get at local departments of motor vehicles.  There is no evidence of the second charge.  Even if there was some truth to that charge, it would only be relevant if black Americans were somehow uniquely incapable of obtaining the required identifications.  Those who suggest such an idea are insulting their fellow citizens in the name of defending them.

I find the charge of racism odd.  Why would it be that blacks would have a harder time, compared to whites, getting an ID?  Perhaps, the Left means to say poor people, and blacks may be disproportionately poor, so race is a proxy.  If so, why not simply say poor people will have a more difficult time, rather using racism, which is a more loaded term.  Looks to me like the use of loaded language is the point.  It puts the proponents of voter ID laws on the defensive.  Injustice against blacks gets the nation’s attention.

Those in favor of presenting IDs before voting remind us that one needs an ID to:

• Board an airplane
• Stay at a hotel
• Purchase an Amtrak ticket
• Apply for a job
• Drive a car
• Purchase alcohol/cigarette
• Open a bank account
• Withdraw funds from a bank account
• Rent/buy a house or apply for mortgage
• Get married

No one ever alleges that any of the above activities or their participants are being “suppressed” because of the ID requirement.

Those in opposition to presenting IDs before voting respond (when there is a coherent response) to the above by saying that voting is a constitutional right.  That is a non sequitur.  There is a constitutionally protected right to gun ownership, but one must have an ID to purchase a firearm.  By the way, there is no constitutional right to vote.  The Fifteenth Amendment guarantees that someone cannot be denied the right to vote on account of his race.

The reason the Left focuses on race when it comes to voter IDs is because it is politically useful and, more importantly, it works.  Linking someone’s motives to racism, no matter how reckless, tends to place one on the defensive.  Once such a charge is made, it is very difficult for that someone to demonstrate his innocence.

One key reason that it works can be explained by author Shelby Steele’s 1990 book, The Content of Our Character.  “The Memory of Enemies” is the final chapter where Steele discusses how black Americans can reenact an “enemy-memory” through situations like hearing a Southern accent or seeing a pickup truck with a gun rack.  For some black Americans, any barrier to vote that could be deemed racial is a case where some remember an enemy that was often prepared to use violence to prevent blacks from voting.  Such memories – even if one did not actually live during the Jim Crow era – are enough to take a defensive posture and fight against policies that bring about barriers.

Being susceptible to enemy-memories is the result of decisions made after emancipation in 1865.  The following year, Congress enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1866.  In 1868, the nation adopted the Fourteenth Amendment.  Both provided former slaves with U.S. citizenship and legal rights.  These were good things, but then, it also meant that former slaves would be living alongside the population that had enslaved them for generations.

One can imagine what might have happened had the Jews remained in Germany after WWII.  We cannot know how events would have developed, but it is likely that the Jewish population would have adopted an identity that was in opposition to the larger German population, even if that population genuinely wanted to make amends.  Creating Israel, as the homeland for the Jewish people, among other things, allowed the Jews to not have a constant reminder of their oppression.

The “Israel” for free blacks (or people of color) was the Colony of Liberia.  A few thousand blacks were relocated to the colony, but the project was generally viewed to be unsuccessful and was unpopular among the black population and abolitionists.  As a result, history played out as it did, where most blacks stayed here in the United States.  That history has left psychological scars.  It has made many within black America suspicious of their fellow countrymen.  The Left understands this and, unfortunately, uses the historical mistreatment of the black population as a political weapon.  Joe Biden has smeared Georgia’s new voting law as “these new Jim Crow laws”, that the law “makes Jim Crow look like Jim Eagle”, and as the “Jim Crow in the 21^st century”.  Today, blacks and whites together are wary of any policy that could be seen as racist.

It is worth noting that other countries have voter ID laws, without controversy surrounding them.  One country is Ghana.  Another one is Nigeria.  A third one is Kenya.  Many countries in Africa have some form of voter identification.  These are nations where blacks populate them, and blacks govern them.  They can evaluate a public policy, free of the effects of an enemy-memory.  Free of the racist stigma, the people of these nations can recognize a good idea when they see it.

Voter ID is one of those good ideas.