WS Chronicle

Republicans in Raleigh and their counterparts on Capitol Hill are in a neck-and-neck race. They are vying for medals for the “Most Delusional,” “Most Shiftless” and the “Most Likely to Spark a Public Revolt.”

After N.C. Republicans rammed through a series of repressive – and repulsive – laws and Republicans on The Hill held the nation ransom and then shuttered the government, we are convinced that we have seen it all and that there are no lengths the GOP won’t go to derail the president and disenfranchise anyone who looks like him.

We should not take the abuse lying down. News that the U.S. Justice Department is filing suit to stop the implementation of N.C.’s problematic voter identification law has buoyed us. Winning any kind of judicial reprieve is a long-shot since the Supreme Court made it clear earlier this year that it is OK with states trampling upon the voting rights of black and brown folks, but at least we will go down fighting.

If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed in vain; then even the monsters we defy shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
– Claude McKay, “If We Must Die”

Conservatives nationwide are taking notice of the Justice Department suit. It will be one of the first such suits after the Supreme Court struck down a key caveat of the Voting Rights Act – one that forced Southern states to get federal approval before implementing hurdles to impede minorities from voting.

The conservative National Center for Public Policy Research sent out a new release Monday in which black Republicans expressed their disdain for Attorney General Eric Holder for his attempt to “turn back the clock on necessary protections enacted by states to ensure the integrity of Americans’ ballots.”

Council Nedd II – the head of Project 21, the National Center for Public Policy Research’s offshoot for black conservatives – laments, “It seems apparent that Holder must think his department has run out of meaningful and substantive issues to address.”
Really, Mr. Nedd?

Fighting to ensure that the right to vote remains open to everyone is a waste of the AG’s time? Fighting to keep open doors kicked down by your forefathers and foremothers is a useless exercise?

Nedd is the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Missionary Church, a largely white Anglican body formed in the 1990s as a protest to the perceived liberalism of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America. Nedd and other black conservatives forget – ignore, rather – that their paths to success are soaked with the blood, sweat and tears of folks who fought for the Voting Rights Act.

To criticize those who are still fighting to uphold those rights may win him favor in the Episcopal Missionary Church, but it is nothing short of a sacrilege to the rest of us.