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Article on Literacy Tests.

Presented as a means for assessing whether voters were educated enough to vote, literacy tests and other methods were designed for a single purpose: to stop Black Americans from voting.

During the Reconstruction period that followed the war, enfranchised Black men gave Ulysses S. Grant his narrow victory in the popular vote. Before that period ended, 2,000 Black Americans would be elected to office in the South.

But by the dawn of the 20th century, all the progress that was made to expand the rights of formerly enslaved Black Americans was severely crippled by the institution of state-specific voting laws that were designed to exclude Black voters from the ballot box. Southern states created elaborate voter registration procedures or “voting literacy tests” that determined whether the voter in question was literate enough to cast their ballot.

Of course, these voting literacy tests were administered largely to voters of color and were scored by biased judges. The tests were intentionally confusing and difficult and one wrong answer meant a failing grade. Even Black voters with college degrees were given failing scores.

In the mid-1960s, a professor of law at Duke University, William W. Van Alstyne, conducted an experiment in which he submitted four questions found on the Alabama voter’s literacy test to “all professors currently teaching constitutional law in American law schools.”

Alstyne’s professors were told to answer all submitted questions without the aid of any external reference, just as any voter would be required to do when presented with the test. Ninety-six respondents sent Alstyne their answers; 70 percent of the answers given to him were incorrect.

As Alstyne had demonstrated, passing a voting literacy test was virtually impossible. The questions were intentionally written to confuse the reader, and one wrong answer would result in automatic failure.

  • came_apart_at_Kmart [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    77·
    3 days ago

    weird that Dems don’t want to fund universal, no cost post secondary education then, if it would so obviously guarantee their eternal victory.

    or maybe they just want to reassert the fash talking point that only the professional-managerial class from credentialed institutions with racial, economic and social barriers should have the franchise.

    • Red_Sunshine_Over_Florida [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      30·
      3 days ago

      More specially, they’re cutting their own throats if attendance in post secondary education declines (which it is for men rn). That reduces their base of voters in the long term, since they’ve decided to become a party that exclusively caters to university-educated professionals.

      • came_apart_at_Kmart [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
        4·
        3 days ago

        I still owe about $5k after ~12 years of public service including 120 qualifying payments (to 3 scummy, inept servicers with exclusive federal contracts) for the public sector loan forgiveness program. after Biden promise to forgive $50k, became $10k became a watered down reform plan that became so bungled, the older program I already qualified for was also frozen right after they had pushed the button to wipe the first chunk of my loans ($20k) and now I sit in limbo with tens of thousands of others, potentially forever.

        the Dems are fucking pathetic on education, unless you’re born extremely rich.

  • LibsEatPoop [any]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
    321·
    4 days ago

    Am I doing this comm correctly? The new rules are confusing. AFAIK, this post belongs here and not c/gossip cuz the person isn’t a public figure. And this comm requires an explanation of why the post is wrong. Right?

  • BeamBrain [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    271·
    3 days ago

    I’m curious about the seeming contradiction here:

    • Poor people are more likely than the overall population to vote D than R
    • Degree holders are less likely than the overall population to be poor
    • Degree holders are more likely than the overall population to vote D than R
    • PKMKII [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
      19·
      3 days ago

      I read an highly granular analysis of the 2020 that found, among other things, that the demo Trump did best with was members of the 1% without college degrees. Obviously that in and of itself is a tiny demo, but it speaks to the MAGA base being petty bourgeoisie and labor aristocracy without higher education. Which like a lot of things, probably speaks more to the average age of the MAGA base than anything else.

    • nightshade [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      8·
      3 days ago

      According to Pew Research, the increased preference for Democrats at lower income levels and increased preference for Republicans at higher income levels only holds up until the highest income bracket, at which point there is a slight preference for Dems again.

      Party preference apparently also only changes significantly based on income in non-college grads, with college grads maintaining a preference for Dems at all income levels.

      According to their methodology, about 10% of the people they surveyed were classified as “upper income”, so it can more or less be said to consist of the top 10% of earners (though the classification is adjusted by local cost of living, so it’s not that clear). Given that this bracket is probably mostly made of college-educated professionals, it seems that education trumps income considerations for this specific bracket. So basically the preference for Dems/Reps based on income is only mostly true, with a spike in support for Dems amongst relatively wealthy college-educated professionals.

  • CthulhusIntern [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    15·
    3 days ago

    Literacy tests are like being told that, to join our video game club, you must beat the first level of Super Mario World without dying, but then when you boot up the SNES, it’s actually Kaizo Mario, but even if you actually succeed, they just punch you in the nuts.