“Racial reconciliation is impossible without some kind of broad-based, systemic reparations,” writes Johnson. “But if a pecuniary answer can’t fix the structural disadvantage — and it can’t — what can?”
Johnson specifically calls for giving every black person five-thirds of a vote, which would be a reversal of the three-fifths figure written into the Constitution.
“A five-thirds compromise would imbue African Americans with a larger political voice that could be used to fight the structural discrimination expressed in housing, education, criminal justice and employment,” he says. “Allowing black votes to count for 167 percent of everyone else’s would mean that 30 million African American votes would count as 50 million, substituting super-votes for the implausible idea of cash payments.” With black voters so massively empowered, politicians will have no choice to but to put black priorities first if they hope to remain in office.
Johnson pays lip service to the important democratic principle of “one man, one vote,” but then dismisses it on grounds that the term is “unclear,” by pointing to a Supreme Court case that has nothing to do with the topic of explicitly giving one racial group super-votes.
Having taken care of his justification of the policy itself, Johnson goes into detail about how it should be constructed. He says it only needs to last for a set period of time (he proposes 24 years), and he also proposes taking inspiration from the Bureau of Indian Affairs for handling the thorny topic of who counts as black and who doesn’t.
To conclude, Johnson forthrightly says that only reverse racism will be sufficient to achieve the goal of racial justice.“Of course, weighted-vote reparations are only slightly more politically feasible than a multi-trillion-dollar payout,” he says. “But we have to consider novel approaches to racial reconciliation … if we are serious about ridding the nation of barriers to opportunity and overcoming the racial discrimination woven into America’s fabric. If racism is the culprit, then dismantling it requires the same tools that constructed it.”
Wrong
Pathetic!
Give us a brake thiis is racial with a capital r we the people are sickvofcit already
Bs
Your trash scum
They do, they do. And this is why we need picture ID for voting.
More evidence that the WaPo is managed by people incapable of logical thinking.
Maybe it should be ever whom is working get’s two votes. Will you now work?? Lol just want a free ride and complain while you even take that.
It seems to me that when women were – FINALLY- granted the right to vote, we were not given special accommodations and that is definitely prejudicial in favor of men. I propose that women also be given a 5/3 weighted vote!! Now that should truly apply the reparations equally across all disenfranchised constituents.