These aren’t those days

Ah, the Year of our Lord 1965. Those were the days, my friend, those were the days. The Beatles played Shea Stadium that year. The mini-skirt craze in London was making its way across the pond. Sandy Koufax pitched a perfect game in 1965-against the Cubs, of course. My Fair Lady was all the rage at the Oscars. Tom & Jerry made their debut on TV, as did A Charlie Brown Christmas.

Spider-Man and Superman comics were on the racks, and the kids couldn’t wait for the newest issue. Or you could spend your allowance on that new game, Barrel of Monkeys. On primetime television, you could take your pick between Green Acres or Bonanza or Gilligan’s Island. The biggest moral issue on those programs was whether Hoss would ask the new lady in town to the dance, or if Gilligan would ruin another rescue. (Can you believe he did it again?) Didn’t need no welfare state. Everybodypulled his weight. Gee, our old LaSalle ran great. Those were the days.

Except that they weren’t. In 1965, the Vietnam War was all the rage, too. Emphasis on rage. Dispatching thousands of American GIs to early deaths. Nuclear war was likely enough that children in this country drilled for the day it would arrive by ducking under their desks, as if that would help much. And racism wasn’t just alive in this country, but alive and kicking. And smug. And daring anybody to do anything about it.

The Selma-to-Montgomery civil rights march ended at the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where the water hoses and police dogs were turned on the marchers. By the “law.”

It was the year Malcolm X was assassinated and the Watts riots broke out in Los Angeles.

So many cities across the country were being described as “racially troubled” that a copy editor here in Arkansas-at the Pine Bluff Commercial-would strike through that phrase every time it appeared in a wire story because it had become a cliché. Yes, those were the days, my friend. Some thought they would never end.

CONGRESS PASSED what became known as the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that year, and it was duly signed by the president. (Both of Arkansas’ senators, John Mc-Clellan and J. William Fulbright, voted against it, continuing their shameful record of opposing civil rights for their fellow citizens.) What a sweeping, far-reaching, overbearing-and very much needed-law that Voting Rights Act was.

With the Voting Rights Act of 1965, literacy tests that only tested some citizens (guess which ones) became a thing of the past. The feds would also decide whether new voting laws in certain parts of the country would stand.

It all depended on whether those changes were just another way to discriminate against black citizens, and many were. No, not all the states were subject to the Voting Rights Act, only certain ones, mainly in the South, and mainly those with a history of suppressing the black vote.

Texas had to prove that any change in its election laws, even if it involved just moving a polling place across the street, didn’t violate the act. Illinois didn’t. Virginia had to prove that any changes in its laws were all aboveboard. Montana didn’t. Louisiana did. Idaho didn’t.

Discriminatory legislation? Yes it was, for the law discriminated against those states with a history of discriminating against their own citizens, and citizens of the United States, on the basis of nothing but their color. And it was about time-well, past time-that the Constitution of the United States was enforced in these parts.

But that was decades ago. A world ago.

The nation’s highest court decided last week that there’s a difference between today and yesterday. And that things change. Sometimes even for the better. And who could argue with the proposition, or just simple observation, that the times they have a-changed in the last 40-some-odd years? Especially when it comes to race in politics. And sex. Take a look at the four secretaries of state before this one. Take a look at the current composition of the Supreme Court of the United States. Or, for that matter, note the president of the United States and the First Family. No, this isn’t your granddaddy’s America.

In last week’s 5-to-4 ruling in Shelby County v. Holder, the Supreme Court said the data the feds have been using all these years to identify states that needed to be covered by the old Voting Rights Act was outdated. It would be surprising only if that data hadn’t changed by now.

The court said the federal government could still oversee voting rights in some selected states and counties, but it’s got to come up with up-to-date information to show which states are still unfairly discriminating against voters at the polls. To quote John G. Roberts Jr., chief justice of the Supreme Court of the United States: “Our country has changed, and while any racial discrimination in voting is too much, Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes to remedy that problem speaks to current conditions.”

All of which makes so much sense you have to wonder why it was only a 5-to-4 decision.

ENTER the dissenters.

Her Honor Ruth Bader Ginsburg emphasized her disappointment with the majority opinion by reading her opinion from the bench. She said, among other things: “Congress’ decision to renew the act [in 2006] and keep the coverage formula was an altogether rational means to serve the end of achieving what was once the subject of a dream: the equal citizenship stature of all in our polity, and voice to every voter in our democracy undiluted by race.”

Yes, ma’am, you are completely right.It was an altogether rational decision-in 1965. But this is 2013. Or as that great political philosopher Casey Stengel used to say, you can look it up. On any calendar. But the date and the times, they have a-changed. What was once a dream has drawn ever closer to reality.

And where it hasn’t-where racial discrimination at the polls can still be found, where some backwoods bigot or his like are still gerrymandering voting districts to dilute the votes of black voters-that crime and disgrace needs to be addressed. But let’s address it where it still exists, not where it existed when LBJ was president.

ALSO HEARD from on the aginners’ side was the Hon. Eric Holder, attorney general of the United States, who practices his own brand of discrimination-the political sort-to gag a free press by instituting criminal proceedings against reporters who dare do their job, like James Rosen at Fox News.

“Let me be very clear,” the attorney general said, echoing a favorite phrase of Richard Nixon’s, “we will not hesitate to take swift enforcement action, using every legal tool that remains available to us, against any jurisdiction that seeks to take advantage of the Supreme Court’s ruling by hindering eligible citizens’ full and free exercise of the franchise.”

Yes, sir. No problem with that. That’s the attorney general’s job. When you find somebody hindering an American citizen’s right to vote, by all means prosecute, prosecute, prosecute. To the limit of the law. Don’t settle for just house arrest the way we do in Arkansas when some legislator tries to fix an election. Take the right to vote seriously. Start now. It would have been even better, General Holder, if you’d started with a case of racial intimidation of voters in Philadelphia, so-called City of Brotherly Love, back in 2008.

You may recall that case, General Holder. Many of us still do. And aren’t about to forget it.