The end of the Voting Rights Act?
5/7/202631 min
The Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act, passed in 1964 and 1965 respectively, marked the beginning of multi-racial democracy in the United States.
But in the decades since, those achievements have been steadily contested. Just days ago, The U.S. Supreme Court dealt yet another blow to the Voting Rights Act with a decision regarding the Louisiana congressional map. Many experts say the Voting Rights Act is facing an existential moment where it stands to be narrowed, marginalized, and legislated out of relevancy, or even existence.
Ari Berman is the voting rights correspondent at Mother Jones and the author of a number of books on the history of the subject, most recently Minority Rule: The Right-Wing Attack on the Will of the People―and the Fight to Resist It.
For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts
Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsSpeaker 00:00
All your favorite CBC podcasts are now available on YouTube. The best in award-winning true crime investigations, hilarious comedies, vibrant pop culture conversations, and even more audio series are all available on CBC Podcasts YouTube channel. You'll also find exclusive video-first episodes, YouTube Shorts, and behind-the-scenes content from our hosts and producers that you can't find anywhere else. So if YouTube is your go-to source for podcasts, just search CBC Podcasts and hit Subscribe, and you'll never miss the latest update.
Barack Obama· Soundbite0:28
[upbeat music stinger] This is a CBC podcast.
Jamie Poisson· Host0:32
[upbeat music] Hey, everybody, I'm Jamie Fossom. The United States has, in many ways, only functioned as a full democracy for about 60 years. Before then, it was functionally an apartheid state, in which millions of people, particularly Black Americans, were systematically denied full political participation and equal citizenship on the basis of race. Then came the civil rights movement, which included a passage of two pieces of legislation designed to change this, the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, two bills which are responsible for ending the regime of apartheid and formalizing a system of multiracial democracy. This period was referred to by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as a second emancipation.