DNC Chair Retracts Term, But Not Substance, From Jim Crow Comment

As previously reported, DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz compared voter ID laws to the violent and oppressive Jim Crow laws that were prevalent in America until the mid 1960s. Ms. Wasserman Schultz said:

[N]ow you have the Republicans, who want to literally drag us all the way back to Jim Crow laws and literally - and very transparently - block access to the polls to voters who are more likely to vote Democratic candidates than Republican candidates. And it's nothing short of that blatant.

Then, only hours after the inflammatory comment, Ms. Wasserman Schultz retracted her comment (sort of) by stating:

Jim Crow was the wrong analogy to use. But I don't regret calling attention to the efforts in a number of states with Republican dominated legislatures, including Florida, to restrict access to the ballot box for all kinds of voters, but particularly young voters, African Americans and Hispanic Americans.

So, what Ms. Wasserman Schultz is really saying is that she is merely retracting her use of the term “Jim Crow”, but not the substance of her comments. This does not make Ms. Wasserman Schultz’s comments any less incendiary.

Jim Crow laws were a terrible time in America’s history. Blacks were denied the right to vote by grandfather clauses (laws that restricted the right to vote to people whose ancestors had voted before the Civil War), poll taxes (fees charged to poor Blacks), white primaries (only Democrats could vote, only Whites could be Democrats), and literacy tests.

The oppression did not stop with denial of voting rights. African Americans were constantly assaulted if they broke protocol of separate water fountains or bathrooms. However, their assaulters never faced justice, because the criminal justice systems, from the police to the judges, were all white. Police officers would even attend a lynching right in the middle of the town square.

Ms. Wasserman Schultz also compares the passage of voter ID laws with such heinous crimes as rape, being burned alive, and dragged behind a car, all which occurred in conjunction with Jim Crow laws.

It is abhorrent that Ms. Wasserman Schultz compared such atrocious and discriminatory laws with the enactment of a policy that has been ruled constitutional by one of the most liberal Supreme Court justices of the 20^th century, and recommended by a former Democratic President. Following the logic of Ms. Wasserman Schultz, Jimmy Carter and John Paul Stevens are both racist and support the denial of civil rights. Ms. Wasserman Schultz should not merely take back her choice of words, but the substance of her comment entirely.