Wisconsin's Fight for Voting Rights Means Preserving Democracy Against Racism

Molly McGrath (L), a voting rights attorney with the ACLU,
works with Madison residents to get the IDs they need
to vote under Wisconsin’s restrictive voter-ID law.
(Courtesy of Molly McGrath); used at In These Times.

Madison, Wisconsin — In Wisconsin, Republican electoral success depends on appealing to white supremacists, and blocking black, brown and young voters from casting ballots.

It's a grand, racist tradition, ole-time religion supported by white Evangelicals.
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"What do you call 1,000 niggers at the bottom of the ocean?" asks a popular joke at a Fond du Lac elementary school, Liz Waters, in the 1970s.

The punchline is, "A good start."

You get it?

The answer to this riddle is not what the niggers are doing at the bottom of the ocean — that's a red herring.

Rather, the significance is the niggers are dead and drowned, and this is just the beginning of the whimsical genocide Wisconsin parents bequeathed to their children during family-time.

Wisconsin is about race — no matter that race is a psychological delusion, and an enduring deadly myth.

Wisconsin racism is why, for example, U.S. Rep Tom Petri (R-Fond du Lac, (1979-2015)), voted against establishing the Martin Luther King, Jr, federal holiday in 1983.

Racism undermines human rights, and racism props up the Republican Party's hold onto power by attacking voting, (Isthmus, In These Times).

Voting as a human and civil right is a societal defect to be overcome for the Republican Party.

As a political issue, opposing voting rights and being seen as opposing voting rights is red meat for the white base of the Republican Party of Wisconsin.

Because while 1,000 dead niggers at the bottom of the ocean doesn't play well, lies of voter fraud and illegal voting is soothing to Republican whites in Wisconsin.