Location: The Heritage Foundation's Van Andel Center
Noted scholar Abigail Thernstrom will present her newly
published book on the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the crown jewel of
American civil rights legislation. Thernstrom argues that
southern resistance to black political power prompted a process by
which the Act was radically revised both for good and ill.
The statute as currently interpreted seeks to ensure the election
of blacks and Hispanics to legislative bodies in numbers
proportional to their presence in the population; this focus on
equality of results rather than mere equal opportunity to be
elected is a radical, and dubious, revision of the Act. Such
race-conscious districting discourages the development of centrist
"post-racial" candidates like Barack Obama. Has the Voting
Rights Act, which helped end Jim Crow, today become a period piece
that serves to keep most minority legislators on the sidelines of
American politics - precisely the opposite of what its original
authors intended? Would an updated law better serve the
political interests of all Americans - minority and white voters
alike? How will the recent Supreme Court case from Austin,
Texas questioning the constitutionality of a portion of the Voting
Rights Act affect those issues? Please join us for a spirited
discussion of these and related matters.
More About the Speakers
Abigail Thernstrom
Adjunct Scholar,
American Enterprise Institute
and Vice Chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights