Liberals don’t think minority voters in Alabama have the capacity to get a free ID (opinion)

The NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund on Wednesday filed a lawsuit in Federal court challenging Alabama’s photo voter I.D. law. The suit, which was filed on behalf of Greater Birmingham Ministries and the Alabama NAACP, claims requiring voters to show photo ID is “discriminatory” and would disenfranchise over 250,000 Alabamians, many of them black and latino, in violation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

A quick Google search for the definition of the word “discriminatory” brings this back:

Discriminatory (adjective): Making or showing an unfair or prejudicial distinction between different categories of people or things, especially on the grounds of race, age, or sex.

Discrimination, by its very definition, means treating groups of people differently from one another, which begs the question, how can it possibly be discriminatory to pass a law that applies equally to everyone? The answer, of course, is that it cannot, as long as the law does not place an “undue burden” on a certain group’s fundamental rights.

Many liberals insist that expecting people to prove they are who they say they are before they exercise democracy’s most sacred right — the right to vote — places an undue burden on poor people, many of them minorities.

More on that specifically in a moment, but let us first consider something deeper that is at play here — a presidential speechwriter once referred to it as “the soft bigotry of low expectations.”

This phrase has become one of the rallying cries for the school choice movement in America, which insists upon high achievement in every school, regardless of the racial or socioeconomic makeup of its student body.

People have a tendency to believe they are who other people say they are. For example, if students are told they should be happy with “just passing” because they come from a difficult situation, most of those children will accept that as their reality. But if those same students are told they are as talented and capable as any other students out there, and therefore should strive to be “A” students, they will more often than not rise to meet those expectations. This is sometimes as simple as a single teacher taking the time to mentor and encourage a student, but more often than not it requires immersing kids in an academic culture of high expectations.

Just take for example Brooklyn College Academy in New York City, where 100 percent of the school’s inner-city black students graduated on time in 2015, while the overall graduation rate for black males in NYC was 58 percent. The name of the school itself sets the tone. It’s a college academy. The students immediately, even if subconsciously, understand what is expected of them. The result is that the overwhelming majority of BCA’s students do indeed go on to college and ultimately on to successful careers.

That may have seemed like a digression, but it is directly related to the issue at hand. Hold on to your hats, because the PC Police are not going to like this one:

It is bigoted to suggest that minorities and lower-income individuals are somehow less capable of acquiring a free photo voter I.D. than everyone else.

This is the aforementioned soft bigotry of low expectations that liberals have so often thrived on, even before the litany of so called “Great Society” programs trapped generations of America’s poor in a dignity-robbing cycle of dependency. It is the soft bigotry of low-character faux “reverends” who traverse the country claiming to speak on behalf of minorities. And it is the soft bigotry of many Democratic politicians, who hold themselves up to be the champions of the very people whose lives they have spectacularly failed to improve for decades.

Here are some facts:

To vote in Alabama, individuals must show a photo ID. This could include a drivers license, non-driver ID, State or Federal-issued ID, US Passport, government employee ID, student ID from a public or private Alabama college, military ID, tribal ID, or, if none of those are accessible, a free photo voter ID provided by the state.

To acquire a free ID, citizens can go to their local Board of Registrars office; there is one located in every one of Alabama’s 67 counties. Additionally, the Secretary of State’s office has visited every county with a mobile photo voter ID van in an effort to reach people right in their neighborhoods.

If people cannot acquire one of these IDs at any point in a four-year period, how on Earth are they going to make it to the polls on Election Day?

Here is another fact: Data shows that voter ID laws have not had any discernible effect on voter turnout.

If that surprises you, do you also get surprised when you see someone driving a car? Because you need a photo ID for that. What about when they buy tobacco products? You need an ID for that, too. How about when someone buys a gun, or certain types of cold medicines, or gets on an airplane, or opens a bank account, or adopts a pet, of purchases alcohol, or applies for Social Security, Medicaid or welfare, or rents a house, or applies for a mortgage, or donates blood, or purchases nail polish at CVS? Every one of those actions requires a photo ID.

Conservatives believe in the capacity of every individual — regardless of their race or socioeconomic status — to do all of the things mentioned above, including acquire a photo ID to vote. Many liberals apparently do not.

And yet we’re the racists?

Liberal bigots don’t think minority voters in Alabama have the capacity to get a free ID https://t.co/Ca3oinaiYB

— Cliff Sims (@Cliff_Sims) December 3, 2015