Political Cortex: The New Face Of Discrimination Has A Strange Shade

The New Face Of Discrimination Has A Strange Shade

By Drew Johnston
04/04/2006 11:14:42 PM EST

MACON, Miss. -- Lean, lanky and a fast-talking blur of perpetual motion, Noxubee County Democratic Chairman Ike Brown has roamed the political landscape of eastern Mississippi for 25 years with one clear aim: electing Democrats who are really Democrats.
Brown has no time for moderate white Democrats who might get elected but who would then support Republican policies. "To hell with 'em," Brown says of people he calls "Dixiecrats." "They're not doing me one bit of good."
Brown's lawyer, Wilbur Colom, says he is simply "a tough politician." But the U.S. Justice Department says Brown's take-no-prisoners brand of politics has crossed the line into discrimination against white voters and candidates.
The Justice Department has launched a landmark lawsuit against Brown -- the first time the federal government has used the 1965 Voting Rights Act to allege racial discrimination against whites.

Frankly, it takes some serious balls to accuse a black Democratic Chairman (in Mississippi, no less) of bias. The whole thing sounds like an attempt to suppress an effective (and, during an election year, potentially dangerous) political leader. Of course, all this is moot if the complaints are legit. So are they?

Brown recruited black candidates to run in Noxubee knowing that they did not meet state residency requirements.

Even if this is true, I'm not sure how it counts as bias against whites. Unless, of course, you apply affirmative action logic to it and assume that all these unqualified black people displaced perfectly good moderate-right white Democrats. Which hurts all of us, really, because our party has a serious shortage of sorta-liberal white guys.

Brown has excluded whites from participating in county Democratic affairs, using such tactics as moving the sites of meetings.

Presumably, blacks still know where the meetings are because the changes are announced via jive.

Brown has attempted to prohibit whites from voting in Democratic primary elections by challenging their registrations and absentee ballots.
Brown and county election officials working with him have discriminated against white voters by rejecting absentee ballots cast by whites on grounds that they are defective while counting black voters' absentee ballots that contained similar defects.

[Insert 2000 election joke here]

: race, campaigns, Justice Department

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