Almost since statehood, Mississippi has failed to scratch the surface of its potential.
It’s all right there in black and white — literally.
By almost every measure used to determine quality of life, Mississippi ranks near the bottom while the state’s “misery index’’ — conditions that make life less enjoyable and more difficult — ranks near to top. Near the bottom in health, education, income, economy, infrastructure and opportunity. Near the top in infectious disease, incarceration, poverty and infant mortality.
It’s been that way for as long as anyone can remember.
And it seems likely to stay that way until Mississippi confronts the issue that is the root cause of those miserable rankings: systemic racism.
For every step forward, we always seem to take at least one step back as the 2022 legislative session clearly indicates.
The legislature passed a bill forbidding the teaching of Critical Race Theory, a college level course intended to teach the history and continuing presence of systemic racism.
In doing so, the legislature said systemic racism doesn’t exist.
More than 150 years of evidence proves otherwise.
Yet, in the same session, after years of failed efforts, the legislature passed a law that would restore the voting rights of those convicted of some felony offenses, which is practiced in 40 states. In Mississippi, having your voting rights restored requires a two-thirds vote of the legislature. In the past 25 years, fewer than 200 disenfranchised felons have had their voting rights restored by the legislature.
This bill would have made it far easier to restore the voting rights of an estimated 235,000 Mississippians currently denied the right to vote because of their felony records. That figure includes 130,000 Black residents, a whopping 16.2 percent of the Black voting age population. Nowhere are Blacks disenfranchised at such a high rate because of a felony record than in our state.
Gov. Tate Reeves vetoed the bill, saying the state has a long history of denying the vote to felons. Mississippi has a long history of many things, including slavery and lynching, so if that’s the basis of his argument, it is exceedingly weak.
If Reeves insists on relying on precedent, he should at least have acknowledged the history of the state’s efforts to limit Black voting.
In the state’s 1890 Constitution, numerous measures were adopted to disenfranchise Black citizens, including poll taxes and literacy tests. The state’s felony disenfranchisement laws included crimes thought to be most common among Black citizens of the era, a list that includes non-violent crimes such as bigamy, bribery, embezzlement, extortion, felony bad check, felony shoplifting, forgery, larceny, perjury, receiving stolen property, theft and timber larceny.
It wasn’t until the 1950s that murder and rape were included among disfranchising crimes, which tells you all you need to know about the true intent of the state’s disenfranchisement policy.
In 1890, Blacks made up 57.5 of the state’s population. There were 1,085,000 Black Mississippians, according to the U.S. Census that year. Two years after the 1890 Constitution was adopted, there were fewer than 9,000 Blacks registered to vote in the state. The state’s felony disenfranchisement policy played a role in that then and continues to play a role today, as the statistics clearly indicate.
That’s not just sad. It’s tragic.
I firmly believe that if the Black population of our state ever reaches its educational, economic and, yes, political potential it will be transformational. Mississippi will begin to realize its true potential to the enormous benefit of Black and white residents alike.
But it would be disastrous for the political ambition of leaders like Tate Reeves, whose power is derived from maintaining the status quo of racial injustice and suppression.
We may have a law in our state that says systemic racism doesn’t exist. But Gov. Reeves’ veto is a clear indication that it does. It’s as plain as the nose on your face.
Some things never change, I suppose.
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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