Coates' Testimony: Yes, The Civil Rights Division Now Has An Explicit Policy Of Not Protecting White Voters

Awful. This is so bad it's good. People won't stand for this.

This is not post-racial. This is the worst kind of "racial:" punitive, payback racial.

The public has been wondering for over a year why the [New Black Panthers] case was dismissed. Coates testified why today:

[There is a] deep-seated opposition to the race-neutral enforcement of the Voting Rights Act against racial minorities and for the protection of whites who have been discriminated against.

Coates verified that the DOJ is infested with racially motivated hostility towards equal enforcement of the law. Like me, Coates testified about the history of open and pervasive hostility inside the Voting Section to protecting the rights of white voters. This hostility first emerged in the case against Ike Brown in Noxubee County, Mississippi, going back as far as 2004:

The opposition within the Voting Section to taking actions on behalf of white voters in Noxubee County, Mississippi, … was widespread.

Coates confirmed that senior managers didn’t even want to open the investigation into discrimination against white voters in Noxubee County:

The Deputy Chief who was leading that election coverage asked me: “can you believe that we are going to Mississippi to protect white voters?”

Coates described how his memoranda were doctored by former Voting Section Chief Joe Rich, confirming my testimony as well as an article that appeared here at PJM this week.

Coates also testified that he was reprimanded by Acting Assistant Attorney General Loretta King when he asked attorneys in job interviews if they could enforce the law equally. Coates asked them if they were willing to enforce the law in a racially neutral fashion, regardless of the race of the wrongdoer, even if the wrongdoer was black. Naturally, this inquiry into the applicant’s sense of fairness greatly offended the racially obsessed King. Her agenda was quite different than Coates’ agenda. Coates testified he was summoned to the senior political offices for a tongue-lashing by King, and the interview questions Coates was asking had to go:

King took offense that I was asking such a question of job applicants and directed me not to ask it again because she does not support equal enforcement of the provisions of the Voting Rights Act.

Note that Mississippi case was from 2004, on Bush's watch, so that doesn't implicate Obama, just the general culture at this Division.

But Coates also testified (that last bit) that he was specifically instructed to not ask if new hires could enforce the law in a racially-neutral way.

Not just that the Division wasn't asking the question, but that he was specifically forbidden to ask it.

They're Jeopardizing Their Own Prosecutions: Laws can be struck, and convictions overturned, for different reasons.

If a law violates the Equal Protection Clause by containing a racially discriminatory element in its very text, it gets knocked down as being "facially" discriminatory. Impermissibly discriminatory "on its face."

But a lot of laws get struck down not for containing some obvious on-its-face discriminatory element, but for being discriminatory "as applied." If a law purporting to neutrally require ID from all voters is usually only applied to Hispanic voters, or black voters, or even white voters, it can be knocked down, and all prosecutions secured under it overturned, as being discriminatory "as applied."

The incompetence here, and pathological payback punitive racism, is therefore astounding. For even if one "understands" why some people would only want to prosecute whites under this law, you'd have to be incompetent to not realize that actually implementing that policy could result in all of your prosecutions of white malefactors being overturned due to discriminatory purpose as applied.

So even if all you want to do is prosecute whites, and don't give a fig if white voters are being intimidated by blacks in places where blacks have the power to do so, you still have to go ahead and do that unless you want to bring the entire law crashing down and set loose all your white criminals too.

This is a very basic thing; it's a Kevin Pollack situation: Were you absent the day they taught law in law school?

The drive to do this then is doubly astounding. Even if I "understand" that some people just might want some racial payback and may want laws that specifically target only one race, you'd think that even these people would know that the system will not permit that, and thus to get the convictions of whites they want so badly they'll also have to suffer the collateral damage of locking up a few caught-red-handed black criminals too.

But... they won't. They're so dedicated to this noxious idea they're willing to set free even the criminals they do want in jail.

And... for God's sakes, if you're going to indulge in a racial double-standard: Here? With truly despicable characters who would intimidate voters from exercising their most basic right under the Constitution? These guys it's even so important to protect you won't prosecute them? This nasty hill is the hill you've decided to die on?

And by the way, here is the sum and entirety of the leftist defense of this. You'll see this in the coming days quite a bit:

Oh Noes! Poor whites are now under a New Jim Crow system! Oh Noes!

So much stupidity and malice is packed into that predictable sarcastic rejoinder. The most important idea expressed: So long as racial discrimination directed against whites does not rise to the level of full, 1955 Jim Crow, no harm, no foul, nothing to complain about, and whites' (and good-spirited minorities', too) objections to such a shabby system of discrimination should just shut their mouths and accept that a little bit of second-class-citizenship is nothing to go crazy about.

So long as the system of racial discrimination isn't as evil as Jim Crow, we can (and should) accept some evil without complaint. Or else ya get the "Oh Noes!" treatment.

Granted: This is not as bad as Jim Crow.

But I'd like a lefty to explain to me why it is not bad at all, or even arguably good. And if it is bad at all -- even if not as bad as Jim Crow -- why should anyone, white black Asian or Hispanic, accept it?

Do we generally have a belief that the government is permitted to dabble in lesser evils? If so, when did we decide that? I don't remember having voted on that.

Actually... For those people in that Mississippi county intimidated away from their right to vote, I can kind of imagine it sure looks like a New Jim Crow to them.

The Colbert Distraction: While this is going on, the media decides it's more fun, and more helpful to Democrats, to cover only tv clown Steven Colbert's joke appearance.

Instapundit also highlights an element here I had overlooked: this doesn't just expose the racially-discriminatory belief system at the Civil Rights Division. It also disproves the Obama spin -- spin? lie -- that the New Black Panthers case was dropped based on the decision of career (non-political-appointee) lawyers and that decision had nothing at all to do with a theory of racial enforcement of the law, just the "facts" of the case.

posted by Ace at 12:32 PM

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