Columns
by Sekou Franklin
Election year politics reached a new low two weeks ago after the Tennessee Tribune, Nashville’s most influential black newspaper, published the names and addresses of hundreds of non-voting residents from the city’s predominantly black north side. In defending its action, the Tribune insisted that the list, comprised of District 1 residents who did not vote in the August primary, would motivate them to vote in the Nov. 7 general election.
Although the Tribune’s action did not legally violate the letter and intent of existing civil rights laws, it did violate the spirit and ethos of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Because voting in American politics is a private right and not compulsory, disciplinary measures, such as exposing non-voters to public reprimand, are callous and unethical, and they help to legitimate a culture of intimidation in electoral politics that has historically been used to dilute the black vote.
The measure was also selective and class-biased, only targeting non-voters from moderate-income, working-class and lower-middle-class black neighborhoods. Regrettably, civil rights activists and leading black figures in the city celebrated the newspaper’s action. On Nov. 2, Margaret Scrivens, a spokesperson for the local NAACP branch, told WSMV-Channel 4 news that the non-voter list was intended to encourage blacks to vote. She further hinted that since blacks died for the right to vote, the non-voter list actually reflected the best of—rather than a contradiction of—the civil rights tradition. At the weekly meeting of the Interdenominational Ministerial Fellowship, Nashville’s principal black faith-based coalition, Bishop George Price, the organization’s president, also endorsed the newspaper’s action. Furthermore, none of North Nashville’s black elected officials openly condemned the newspaper’s measure.
The endorsement by leading civil rights figures is even more shameful when considering that segregationists used controversial outing measures to discourage black support for the civil rights movement. In the 1950s, the NAACP brought legal challenges against government officials in Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana and Florida after they ordered the organization to hand over or publish its membership lists. Segregationists used this outing measure to expose rank-and-file NAACP members, whose identities were confidential, to retaliation and violent attacks. In the 1958 case, NAACP vs. Alabama, the Supreme Court said this tactic was unconstitutional because it was intentionally designed to prevent blacks from joining the NAACP.
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So it comes as a surprise that Nashville’s civil rights groups would resort to outing—this time against blacks—to increase black voter turnout. To suggest that this is a legitimate and righteous measure that reflects the best of the civil rights movement is appalling and disingenuous. To the contrary, it is coercive and reactionary, and exposes working-class, black non-voters to unfair public ostracism. In reality, those who supported the non-voter list were less concerned with teaching the black community about the importance of voting than with advancing narrow partisan interests. The measure’s true intent was to embarrass blacks into the voting booth to produce a record turnout in support of Harold Ford Jr.’s senatorial bid. This was election-year politics at its worse.
Interestingly, the Tribune only targeted a select group of North Nashville residents who did not vote in the August primary, but ignored eligible blacks and whites who did not vote in the March 2006 and September 2005 elections. Voter turnout in the latter elections was very low, less than the August primary. The low numbers suggest that all precincts—black, white, Latino, poor, working-class, middle-class, and affluent—experienced low turnout in the elections preceding the August primary. If the Tribune and its supporters were truly interested in encouraging residents to vote—absent partisan interests—they would have expanded its non-voter list across the city. Yet the newspaper’s selective identification of non-voters bolstered the misconception that, compared to other socio-demographic groups, working-class and poor blacks are not good citizens, care less about voting, are unwilling to cooperate with a (mythical) pluralistic social contract, and have little respect for their ancestors who fought for the right to vote.
Never mind that, decades ago, social scientists debunked the myth that non-voting can be explained solely by political apathy. Although this is an important explanation, non-voting also happens because of low exposure to politics, infirmity and medical hardships, transportation barriers, electoral laws that discourage people from voting, archaic registration requirements, socioeconomic barriers, the alienation of prospective voters from community and civic organizations, disillusionment with the two-party system, fears that the political process is corrupt and will discard votes, the belief that political outcomes are overly determined by wealthy elites and corporations, and the fact that political campaigns are framed to appeal to the middle-class, instead of the poor and working-class who make up a larger share of non-voters.
Non-voting behavior won’t be remedied by exposing a select group of eligible voters to public ridicule, especially when this is done for partisan gain. If non-voting can be ameliorated, it can only come about through a combination of factors: cultivating candidates who really care about issues pertaining to working class voters; systemic changes to American electoral and campaign finance laws—changes that will only be initiated by grassroots social movements; and the creation of sustainable voter education and mobilization programs that are equally effective in off-election and critical election years.
Regardless of the explanations for non-voting, the newspaper’s swift-boating should be rejected. Instead of motivating blacks to go to the polls, it will produce greater disillusionment with the political process among the people who the civil rights groups claim to be assisting. More than anything, the outing measure undercuts the moral high ground of Nashville’s black leaders, many of whom fought for voting rights, particularly as they struggle against the right-wing’s continued attempts to disenfranchise black voters.
Sekou Franklin is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at Middle Tennessee State University.