One of my erstwhile colleagues made this comment after I wrote about UPCOMING voter scandals. He understood that there were a number of people placed on the felon list, but also notes that "some people need to learn how to use a ballot."
I'd like to go backwards a bit.
Approximately fifty years ago, it was customary to browse through political science journals and see little to nothing about black people's political attitudes or their voting behavior. In fact, when this information DID appear, it was always belittling. Black people don't care about politics. Black people don't have any political attitudes.
If you would've pressed these scholars up to prove their propositions...they would've pointed to one thing--black voting patterns.
What's the problem with this scenario? Black people couldn't vote.
Now to be technical, this isn't really true. Some black people could vote. But if out of a county with 90 black adults, only 2 got to vote, there are only two possible explanations. Either they didn't vote because they didn't want to...or they didn't vote because they couldn't.
Fast forward.
Now what my erstwhile colleague would have us believe is that a significant number of black citizens are so clueless that they just don't know how to cast a ballot. I disagree with this.
But whatever the case, the next entry will talk about why this misses the point.