The American Melting Pot and The Electorate, Part Two
This was first published in March 2013
Voting by the public is essential to a representative democracy, but voting in itself does not necessarily mean a nation is truly democratic; after all, many communist countries held elections, but there were only their own candidates on the ballots. This didn't stop them from calling their systems "democratic republics." Hitler, after suppressing all political parties except his own Nazi Party, used public referendums, called plebiscites, to validate certain of his actions. With Nazi thugs ... I mean poll watchers, stationed everywhere, a person had to be one brave German to vote "no," although many of the issues up for a vote were highly popular, and likely would have been popular in a truly free setting.*
In the Russian Empire under Tsar Nicholas II, unrest in 1905** brought some reforms to pacify the population, which was made up overwhelmingly of peasants and workers. A Russian parliament, the Duma, was set up with very limited powers, as the upper chamber and the Tsar both had to support any measures passed by the elected lower chamber. The upper chamber was composed of conservative elements of society, many appointed directly by the Tsar. Still, the Duma was something of a symbol of the beginnings of a constitutional monarchy in Russia. The demographics of the country were so heavily peasant and worker, the Tsar and his government limited who could vote (excluding women and soldiers, who were overwhelmingly peasants, and setting a minimum age of 25, thus excluding most students) and tilted the playing field by designing a system where more "weight" was given to votes from the upper classes (the details of the Russian electoral system are pretty complex and beyond the scope of this article, but one upper class vote was often equal to between ten and twenty or more lower class votes). Even then, the first elected Duma representatives in 1906 were heavily peasant and worker, groups that wanted far more reform of the system than had been implemented up to that point. The Tsar dissolved the Duma after only a little more than two months and some members who had strongly supported government reforms were actually arrested and forbidden to run again. New elections were held in early 1907 which still produced a reformist majority. This Duma was likewise dissolved in short order. Under the idea of "if you can't beat 'em with a rigged system, rig it even more," the Tsarist government added even more importance to the votes of the upper classes. While this too didn't produce a subservient lower chamber, it was much more to the liking of the government and this session of the Duma lasted for several years.
For a large part of the history of the United States, the individual states set their own qualifications for voter eligibility and some early state laws originally pretty much limited eligible voters to white, male landowners. While most black Americans back then were slaves, even free black men could not vote in most states. While state laws gradually began to change to allow more participation, the withdrawal of Federal troops from former states of the Confederacy in the post-Civil War era brought new state laws to try to circumvent then recent amendments to the U.S. Constitution disallowing discriminatory voter eligibility laws against legal "male" American citizens, regardless of race. So called "literacy tests" came into practice in a number of states to exclude blacks from voting, as illiterate whites were often exempted from the law by white officials, or special clauses in the laws. Poll taxes, really a tax required to be able to vote, were another method used by white southern Democrats to limit the vote of blacks who then were overwhelmingly Republicans. You must remember, slavery had been so pervasive in the pre Civil War South, that after the war blacks constituted a high percentage of citizens in many southern states, even a majority in some. Native Americans struggled considerably in the right to vote, as many whites saw them as almost a foreign element, in spite of the fact they were born in the United States. Similar discriminatory practices were used to deprive Native Americans of voting rights, as had been used against black Americans, but like those black citizens, the Voting Rights Act also helped Native Americans, as well as American Latinos. It is important to remember, residents of Puerto Rico are American citizens, but such residents cannot vote in federal elections, although as American citizens, they are covered by the Constitution and the Voting Rights Act for elections in their own territory. This is the same in other U.S. possessions, like Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands.
The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s helped move the country forward regarding the right to vote as Congress passed, and President Lyndon Johnson signed, the Voting Rights Act in the mid 1960s, which quashed poll taxes and other such nonsense. Previously, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution granted women the legal right to vote in 1920. The early 1970s saw voting rights further expanded as the age to vote was lowered to 18 from 21, much the consequence of the nation's growing dissatisfaction with the Vietnam War and the eligibility for the draft of men beginning at age 18, bringing the charge, "old enough to fight, but not old enough to vote." Remember too, as I noted above, the Tsar did not allow soldiers to vote!
Defining who can vote also can lead to who governs and who gets representation. I say "can lead," because a fairly large number of Americans DO NOT vote in any given election; so, the right to vote doesn't necessarily mean a particular point of view will win an election. In the immediate post Civil War South, blacks could legally vote, but intimidation by the Ku Klux Klan kept many African Americans too scared to risk voting. In the more modern era, the roles of blacks in American elections has shifted, as has the role of white southerners, although that change was more gradual. The Great Depression and Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal saw black Americans shift decidedly into the Democratic Party in the 1936 election (when FDR won a second term, winning in a landslide over Republican Alf Landon), where they have remained ever since, "usually" providing Democratic candidates with at least 90% of the black vote in any given election. Interestingly, this situation placed both blacks and white southerners in the Democratic Party, in spite of the very troubled history between the two racial groups.*** Gradually, a number of cases, like the desegregation of schools (first enforced by Republican President Dwight Eisenhower) and the Voting Rights Act (favored and signed by Democratic President Lyndon Johnson), stirred some southern whites to abandon the Democrats for various other parties, although many often later returned to the Democratic column on the ballot, as the thought of voting Republican was just too much for a region steeped in hatred for the GOP since the Civil War. As the two major parties gradually changed roles on many issues, southern whites began a gradual change to the Republican Party, eventually making the once "solidly Democratic South," into a solidly Republican South and providing a number of major leaders to the Republican Party, like Newt Gingrich (not a native southerner, but he came to be associated with Georgia), Dick Armey (not a native southerner, but became associated with Texas), Trent Lott of Mississippi, Strom Thurmond of South Carolina (a former Democrat and leader of the Dixiecrats, a pro-segregation party of southern Democrats in the late 1940s), Rick Perry of Texas (a former Democrat), Phil Gramm of Texas (a former Democrat), Richard Shelby of Alabama (a former Democrat), Jesse Helms of North Carolina (a former Democrat only in his early years), Mitch McConnell of Kentucky (although born in Alabama, from childhood on in Kentucky). This is only meant to be a sampling, not a definitive list.
I'll finish his series in the next article with what's been going on in the last couple of years up to the present.
* After Hitler's Austrian homeland was made part of Germany in the spring of 1938, Hitler called for a plebiscite. The idea that Germans would vote against that was not likely in the first place. The more important question was, if Austrians would ratify the move in substantial numbers, which they did by a slightly higher percentage than in the rest of Germany. After World War One, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was broken up, with many regions becoming parts of other countries, newly established or existing. This left the German Austrian part as a small separate nation, initially called "The Republic of German Austria." For more on these events, see my article: http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2011/06/german-question-part-one-hundred-four.html
And for Austria becoming part of Germany during Hitler's rule, see:
http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2011/07/german-question-part-one-hundred-twenty_30.html
** This was actually a revolution that failed, but it is often seen by historians as a sort of dress rehearsal for the 1917 revolution which brought down the Tsar. This was followed only months later by the Bolshevik overthrow of the government that had replaced the Tsar and his officials. This brought communist rule for decades.
*** By that time, and certainly later, a fairly substantial number of black Americans had left the South for other parts of the country, often for northern industrial cities, where laborers could earn a pretty decent wage, thanks to union victories over time.
WORD HISTORY:
Minor-This word goes back to the Indo European root "mey/mei," which had the notion of "small, little." This gave its Latin offspring "minuere," which meant "to lessen, to make smaller, reduce." From this was derived Latin "minor," with the general meaning "smaller." English borrowed the word in the 1200s as "minour/menour." The noun form developed in Latin from the adjective as a word for a Franciscan, from the Latin expression of St Francis "Frates Minores;" that is, "lesser brethren," meant to show humility for his religious order. English borrowed the noun form in the 1300s. Latin "minores" also meant "young" (lesser in age) and English took that meaning, which is still with us today, as well as the general "lesser" meaning, also later used for a secondary course of study in universities. I have to be honest, "minor" is a tough word to research, and some Germanic languages have forms seemingly going way back in time, but whether these came by way of Latin, or from a Germanic form likewise derived from Indo European root, I cannot really say, although I lean toward the borrowing from Latin, as I could not find a form in Old English, which "seems to suggest" the other Germanic dialects borrowed forms from Latin AFTER the Anglo-Saxons left northern Germany, but the term also could have died out in Old English before it was ever recorded in writing.
Voting by the public is essential to a representative democracy, but voting in itself does not necessarily mean a nation is truly democratic; after all, many communist countries held elections, but there were only their own candidates on the ballots. This didn't stop them from calling their systems "democratic republics." Hitler, after suppressing all political parties except his own Nazi Party, used public referendums, called plebiscites, to validate certain of his actions. With Nazi thugs ... I mean poll watchers, stationed everywhere, a person had to be one brave German to vote "no," although many of the issues up for a vote were highly popular, and likely would have been popular in a truly free setting.*
In the Russian Empire under Tsar Nicholas II, unrest in 1905** brought some reforms to pacify the population, which was made up overwhelmingly of peasants and workers. A Russian parliament, the Duma, was set up with very limited powers, as the upper chamber and the Tsar both had to support any measures passed by the elected lower chamber. The upper chamber was composed of conservative elements of society, many appointed directly by the Tsar. Still, the Duma was something of a symbol of the beginnings of a constitutional monarchy in Russia. The demographics of the country were so heavily peasant and worker, the Tsar and his government limited who could vote (excluding women and soldiers, who were overwhelmingly peasants, and setting a minimum age of 25, thus excluding most students) and tilted the playing field by designing a system where more "weight" was given to votes from the upper classes (the details of the Russian electoral system are pretty complex and beyond the scope of this article, but one upper class vote was often equal to between ten and twenty or more lower class votes). Even then, the first elected Duma representatives in 1906 were heavily peasant and worker, groups that wanted far more reform of the system than had been implemented up to that point. The Tsar dissolved the Duma after only a little more than two months and some members who had strongly supported government reforms were actually arrested and forbidden to run again. New elections were held in early 1907 which still produced a reformist majority. This Duma was likewise dissolved in short order. Under the idea of "if you can't beat 'em with a rigged system, rig it even more," the Tsarist government added even more importance to the votes of the upper classes. While this too didn't produce a subservient lower chamber, it was much more to the liking of the government and this session of the Duma lasted for several years.
For a large part of the history of the United States, the individual states set their own qualifications for voter eligibility and some early state laws originally pretty much limited eligible voters to white, male landowners. While most black Americans back then were slaves, even free black men could not vote in most states. While state laws gradually began to change to allow more participation, the withdrawal of Federal troops from former states of the Confederacy in the post-Civil War era brought new state laws to try to circumvent then recent amendments to the U.S. Constitution disallowing discriminatory voter eligibility laws against legal "male" American citizens, regardless of race. So called "literacy tests" came into practice in a number of states to exclude blacks from voting, as illiterate whites were often exempted from the law by white officials, or special clauses in the laws. Poll taxes, really a tax required to be able to vote, were another method used by white southern Democrats to limit the vote of blacks who then were overwhelmingly Republicans. You must remember, slavery had been so pervasive in the pre Civil War South, that after the war blacks constituted a high percentage of citizens in many southern states, even a majority in some. Native Americans struggled considerably in the right to vote, as many whites saw them as almost a foreign element, in spite of the fact they were born in the United States. Similar discriminatory practices were used to deprive Native Americans of voting rights, as had been used against black Americans, but like those black citizens, the Voting Rights Act also helped Native Americans, as well as American Latinos. It is important to remember, residents of Puerto Rico are American citizens, but such residents cannot vote in federal elections, although as American citizens, they are covered by the Constitution and the Voting Rights Act for elections in their own territory. This is the same in other U.S. possessions, like Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands.
The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s helped move the country forward regarding the right to vote as Congress passed, and President Lyndon Johnson signed, the Voting Rights Act in the mid 1960s, which quashed poll taxes and other such nonsense. Previously, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution granted women the legal right to vote in 1920. The early 1970s saw voting rights further expanded as the age to vote was lowered to 18 from 21, much the consequence of the nation's growing dissatisfaction with the Vietnam War and the eligibility for the draft of men beginning at age 18, bringing the charge, "old enough to fight, but not old enough to vote." Remember too, as I noted above, the Tsar did not allow soldiers to vote!
Defining who can vote also can lead to who governs and who gets representation. I say "can lead," because a fairly large number of Americans DO NOT vote in any given election; so, the right to vote doesn't necessarily mean a particular point of view will win an election. In the immediate post Civil War South, blacks could legally vote, but intimidation by the Ku Klux Klan kept many African Americans too scared to risk voting. In the more modern era, the roles of blacks in American elections has shifted, as has the role of white southerners, although that change was more gradual. The Great Depression and Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal saw black Americans shift decidedly into the Democratic Party in the 1936 election (when FDR won a second term, winning in a landslide over Republican Alf Landon), where they have remained ever since, "usually" providing Democratic candidates with at least 90% of the black vote in any given election. Interestingly, this situation placed both blacks and white southerners in the Democratic Party, in spite of the very troubled history between the two racial groups.*** Gradually, a number of cases, like the desegregation of schools (first enforced by Republican President Dwight Eisenhower) and the Voting Rights Act (favored and signed by Democratic President Lyndon Johnson), stirred some southern whites to abandon the Democrats for various other parties, although many often later returned to the Democratic column on the ballot, as the thought of voting Republican was just too much for a region steeped in hatred for the GOP since the Civil War. As the two major parties gradually changed roles on many issues, southern whites began a gradual change to the Republican Party, eventually making the once "solidly Democratic South," into a solidly Republican South and providing a number of major leaders to the Republican Party, like Newt Gingrich (not a native southerner, but he came to be associated with Georgia), Dick Armey (not a native southerner, but became associated with Texas), Trent Lott of Mississippi, Strom Thurmond of South Carolina (a former Democrat and leader of the Dixiecrats, a pro-segregation party of southern Democrats in the late 1940s), Rick Perry of Texas (a former Democrat), Phil Gramm of Texas (a former Democrat), Richard Shelby of Alabama (a former Democrat), Jesse Helms of North Carolina (a former Democrat only in his early years), Mitch McConnell of Kentucky (although born in Alabama, from childhood on in Kentucky). This is only meant to be a sampling, not a definitive list.
I'll finish his series in the next article with what's been going on in the last couple of years up to the present.
* After Hitler's Austrian homeland was made part of Germany in the spring of 1938, Hitler called for a plebiscite. The idea that Germans would vote against that was not likely in the first place. The more important question was, if Austrians would ratify the move in substantial numbers, which they did by a slightly higher percentage than in the rest of Germany. After World War One, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was broken up, with many regions becoming parts of other countries, newly established or existing. This left the German Austrian part as a small separate nation, initially called "The Republic of German Austria." For more on these events, see my article: http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2011/06/german-question-part-one-hundred-four.html
And for Austria becoming part of Germany during Hitler's rule, see:
http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2011/07/german-question-part-one-hundred-twenty_30.html
** This was actually a revolution that failed, but it is often seen by historians as a sort of dress rehearsal for the 1917 revolution which brought down the Tsar. This was followed only months later by the Bolshevik overthrow of the government that had replaced the Tsar and his officials. This brought communist rule for decades.
*** By that time, and certainly later, a fairly substantial number of black Americans had left the South for other parts of the country, often for northern industrial cities, where laborers could earn a pretty decent wage, thanks to union victories over time.
WORD HISTORY:
Minor-This word goes back to the Indo European root "mey/mei," which had the notion of "small, little." This gave its Latin offspring "minuere," which meant "to lessen, to make smaller, reduce." From this was derived Latin "minor," with the general meaning "smaller." English borrowed the word in the 1200s as "minour/menour." The noun form developed in Latin from the adjective as a word for a Franciscan, from the Latin expression of St Francis "Frates Minores;" that is, "lesser brethren," meant to show humility for his religious order. English borrowed the noun form in the 1300s. Latin "minores" also meant "young" (lesser in age) and English took that meaning, which is still with us today, as well as the general "lesser" meaning, also later used for a secondary course of study in universities. I have to be honest, "minor" is a tough word to research, and some Germanic languages have forms seemingly going way back in time, but whether these came by way of Latin, or from a Germanic form likewise derived from Indo European root, I cannot really say, although I lean toward the borrowing from Latin, as I could not find a form in Old English, which "seems to suggest" the other Germanic dialects borrowed forms from Latin AFTER the Anglo-Saxons left northern Germany, but the term also could have died out in Old English before it was ever recorded in writing.
Labels: Austria, Black Americans, Communism, Democrats, English, etymology, Hitler, Latin, Nicholas II, racism, Republicans, right to vote, Tsarism, voter suppression, Voting Rights Act
posted by Randy at 2:35 PM
3 Comments:
U didnt say George Corley Wallace was a democrat mus be ashamed to admit it. Union victrys only brought job losses still to this day.
I've made mention of George Wallace in other posts, including his affiliation with the Democratic Party for quite some time. Racism in America is a legacy of both party's although in more recent times, Democrats have worked to try to erase some of the scars of the nation's past. They aren't perfect, but I'd rather be a Democrat trying to solve problems than to be A Republican trying to perpetuate the problems and appeal to some of the worst in Americans. Unions have helped many an American achieve middle class status and to protect the lives and well being of American workers in general, not just union members. I'm totally FOR unions, even if I have an occasional disagreement on a given issue. Similar to what I said above about Democrats, unions aren't perfect either, but I'd rather support unions and working people (including small businesses) than support continued tax cuts and welfare for the richest people in America, only to see them pile millions on tops of millions on top of billions.
Well put, Randy. At least Wallace showed some remorse for his racism later in his life.
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