However, racism was never far beneath the surface as became apparent after the election of the first African-American president, Barack Obama, who personified the nation's demographic changes in which non-whites would soon become the majority.
The old racist bigotry about "inferior" blacks being unqualified to be citizens reemerged in conspiracy theories about Obama being born in Kenya and thus supposedly disqualified to be President.
The Neo-Confederate Court
The Supreme Court's right-wing majority also lent a hand on behalf of Republican political power and the need to suppress the votes of pro-Democratic constituencies, including blacks, Hispanics, Asian-Americans and the poor.
With the Citizens United ruling in 2010, the five right-wing justices -- John Roberts, Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito -- opened the floodgates to unlimited campaign spending by right-wing billionaires like the Koch Brothers.
Then, in June 2013, the same five justices gutted the 1965 Voting Rights Act (which had been reauthorized in 2006) by removing the requirement that states and districts with a history of racial bias in voting needed to get pre-approval for electoral changes.
Despite the Fifteenth Amendment's empowerment of Congress to enforce voting rights, the five justices decided that "states' rights" trumped that clear-cut Constitutional authority. The heart of the Act was removed unless Congress devised a new formula, something that today's right-wing Republicans will make sure won't happen.
The winking and nodding between the rightists on the U.S. Supreme Court and those in Congress and in the states was reminiscent of the trickery that racist officials in the Jim Crow era devised to keep African-Americans from the polls.
Jim Crow II
Much as the Citizens United ruling brought of flood of secret money into the coffers of mostly Republican candidates, the Court's voting rights ruling unleashed a rush of Southern states imposing new restrictions on voting, aimed at disqualifying or discouraging blacks and other minorities from casting ballots.
As the New York Times reported on July 6...
"State officials across the South are aggressively moving ahead with new laws requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls after the Supreme Court decision striking down a portion of the Voting Rights Act."The Republicans who control state legislatures throughout the region say such laws are needed to prevent voter fraud. But such fraud is extremely rare, and Democrats are concerned that the proposed changes will make it harder for many poor voters and members of minorities -- who tend to vote Democratic -- to cast their ballots in states that once discriminated against black voters with poll taxes and literacy tests. ...
"Within hours [of the Supreme Court ruling], Texas officials said that they would begin enforcing a strict photo identification requirement for voters, which had been blocked by a federal court on the ground that it would disproportionately affect black and Hispanic voters.
"In Mississippi and Alabama, which had passed their own voter identification laws but had not received federal approval for them, state officials said that they were moving to begin enforcing the laws.
"The next flash point over voting laws will most likely be in North Carolina, where several voting bills had languished there this year as the Republicans who control the Legislature awaited the Supreme Court ruling on the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which had covered many counties in the state.
"After the ruling, some Republican lawmakers said that they would move ... to pass a bill requiring voters to present photo identification at the polls. And some Republicans there are considering cutting back on the number of early voting days in the state, which were especially popular among Democrats and black voters during the 2012 presidential election. "
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