With all the talk about what the supreme court ruled on the voting rights act of 1965 I have been doing some reading on the subject of gerrymandering. I’m beginning to get an understanding of how that works. Now I’m aware that both political parties engage in such activity to gain an advantage. Through processes know as cracking and packing their candidate, or their incumbents are almost assured of a victory.
I began to think about that some more and the 3/5ths compromise came to mind. You remember that don’t you? That’s when it was agreed that slaves would only be counted as 3/5ths of a person. Well, that is what was said but the reality is only three out of five enslaved people could be counted in the population. The population of course influenced how much representation the southern states had in government. You could view that in this way, the more slaves the southerners owned the more representation they could have in government. It would be like just buying representatives. A precursor to gerrymandering! That was in 1787.
The immediate effect of that compromise was it unified the states. That’s why it was called a compromise. The southern states relied heavily on agriculture for their economy and that slave labor was needed. The south felt those slaves, even though they couldn’t vote, should be fully counted for setting representation. In other words, they can’t vote, but they can allow southern whites (democrats) to gain more power. Then having gained that power they can keep the institution of slavery going strong and even spread it to new territories.
The end result of that compromise however was that the southern states were gaining an unfair advantage in elections and influencing the legislature. It created some of the conditions leading to the civil war. Scholars have argued that ever since, whether the civil war was really about slavery or not. What the war was about, was power. Equality in representation is at the heart of that. It still is. The democrats today are still attempting to use the black folks as their pawns. They are counting on that demographic to vote for them, every time. Strange thing about that is, it seems to be working.
The southern democrats wanted to use those people when they were slaves to gain power, and today they are still using the same tactics. They fought a war in an attempt to keep them enslaved. They lost that conflict. They then created the sharecropped economy, enacted Jim Crow laws and attempted to keep those people dependent upon them. And today the narrative to those same people is, you can’t do it on your own, you need us! Even Barack Obama said that!
History does indeed repeat itself. It’s the same old story. Gerrymandering in 1787? You bet there was, and the democrats were leading the effort to do so. Not much has changed in 239 years. The 3/5ths’ compromise. We are told we should be outraged that black folks were only considered three fifths of a person! That’s one way of saying it I suppose. The truth is only three out of five people could be counted out of that population to be included for taxation and representation purposes. Yes, taxation was a part of that as well.
Taxation without representation. Sound familiar? Yeah, some things never change. Only things changing are the motives. Sometimes you want those representatives to retain power and sometimes to change the rules. It’s always great when you get to pick your representative.
An aging man living in a confusing world. I was born and raised in East Hampton, yes “the Hamptons” but not rich, not famous and definitely not woke. These are my thoughts, my memories and my opinions. Just the stuff of the regular Joe.
With all the talk about what the supreme court ruled on the voting rights act of 1965 I have been doing some reading on the subject of gerrymandering. I’m beginning to get an understanding of how that works. Now I’m aware that both political parties engage in such activity to gain an advantage. Through processes know as cracking and packing their candidate, or their incumbents are almost assured of a victory.
I began to think about that some more and the 3/5ths compromise came to mind. You remember that don’t you? That’s when it was agreed that slaves would only be counted as 3/5ths of a person. Well, that is what was said but the reality is only three out of five enslaved people could be counted in the population. The population of course influenced how much representation the southern states had in government. You could view that in this way, the more slaves the southerners owned the more representation they could have in government. It would be like just buying representatives. A precursor to gerrymandering! That was in 1787.
The immediate effect of that compromise was it unified the states. That’s why it was called a compromise. The southern states relied heavily on agriculture for their economy and that slave labor was needed. The south felt those slaves, even though they couldn’t vote, should be fully counted for setting representation. In other words, they can’t vote, but they can allow southern whites (democrats) to gain more power. Then having gained that power they can keep the institution of slavery going strong and even spread it to new territories.
The end result of that compromise however was that the southern states were gaining an unfair advantage in elections and influencing the legislature. It created some of the conditions leading to the civil war. Scholars have argued that ever since, whether the civil war was really about slavery or not. What the war was about, was power. Equality in representation is at the heart of that. It still is. The democrats today are still attempting to use the black folks as their pawns. They are counting on that demographic to vote for them, every time. Strange thing about that is, it seems to be working.
The southern democrats wanted to use those people when they were slaves to gain power, and today they are still using the same tactics. They fought a war in an attempt to keep them enslaved. They lost that conflict. They then created the sharecropped economy, enacted Jim Crow laws and attempted to keep those people dependent upon them. And today the narrative to those same people is, you can’t do it on your own, you need us! Even Barack Obama said that!
History does indeed repeat itself. It’s the same old story. Gerrymandering in 1787? You bet there was, and the democrats were leading the effort to do so. Not much has changed in 239 years. The 3/5ths’ compromise. We are told we should be outraged that black folks were only considered three fifths of a person! That’s one way of saying it I suppose. The truth is only three out of five people could be counted out of that population to be included for taxation and representation purposes. Yes, taxation was a part of that as well.
Taxation without representation. Sound familiar? Yeah, some things never change. Only things changing are the motives. Sometimes you want those representatives to retain power and sometimes to change the rules. It’s always great when you get to pick your representative.
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With all the talk about what the supreme court ruled on the voting rights act of 1965 I have been doing some reading on the subject of gerrymandering. I’m beginning to get an understanding of how that works. Now I’m aware that both political parties engage in such activity to gain an advantage. Through processes know as cracking and packing their candidate, or their incumbents are almost assured of a victory.
I began to think about that some more and the 3/5ths compromise came to mind. You remember that don’t you? That’s when it was agreed that slaves would only be counted as 3/5ths of a person. Well, that is what was said but the reality is only three out of five enslaved people could be counted in the population. The population of course influenced how much representation the southern states had in government. You could view that in this way, the more slaves the southerners owned the more representation they could have in government. It would be like just buying representatives. A precursor to gerrymandering! That was in 1787.
The immediate effect of that compromise was it unified the states. That’s why it was called a compromise. The southern states relied heavily on agriculture for their economy and that slave labor was needed. The south felt those slaves, even though they couldn’t vote, should be fully counted for setting representation. In other words, they can’t vote, but they can allow southern whites (democrats) to gain more power. Then having gained that power they can keep the institution of slavery going strong and even spread it to new territories.
The end result of that compromise however was that the southern states were gaining an unfair advantage in elections and influencing the legislature. It created some of the conditions leading to the civil war. Scholars have argued that ever since, whether the civil war was really about slavery or not. What the war was about, was power. Equality in representation is at the heart of that. It still is. The democrats today are still attempting to use the black folks as their pawns. They are counting on that demographic to vote for them, every time. Strange thing about that is, it seems to be working.
The southern democrats wanted to use those people when they were slaves to gain power, and today they are still using the same tactics. They fought a war in an attempt to keep them enslaved. They lost that conflict. They then created the sharecropped economy, enacted Jim Crow laws and attempted to keep those people dependent upon them. And today the narrative to those same people is, you can’t do it on your own, you need us! Even Barack Obama said that!
History does indeed repeat itself. It’s the same old story. Gerrymandering in 1787? You bet there was, and the democrats were leading the effort to do so. Not much has changed in 239 years. The 3/5ths’ compromise. We are told we should be outraged that black folks were only considered three fifths of a person! That’s one way of saying it I suppose. The truth is only three out of five people could be counted out of that population to be included for taxation and representation purposes. Yes, taxation was a part of that as well.
Taxation without representation. Sound familiar? Yeah, some things never change. Only things changing are the motives. Sometimes you want those representatives to retain power and sometimes to change the rules. It’s always great when you get to pick your representative.
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