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A near impossible literacy test Louisiana used to suppress the black vote

(www.openculture.com)
253 points rcarmo | 1 comments | 21 Oct 24 21:29 UTC | HN request time: 0.204s | source
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terminalbraid ◴[21 Oct 24 23:33 UTC] No.41909658[source]▶
In a similar vein, linked are math questions Russian universities would give to Jewish students to filter them out in entrance exams.

https://arxiv.org/abs/1110.1556

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incompatible ◴[21 Oct 24 23:53 UTC] No.41909774[source]▶
Australia had something similar to implement its "White Australia" policy. Apparently, British authorities objected to explicitly racist rules. So the scheme they came up with was that the border officials could, at their discretion, ask somebody coming into the country to pass a dictation test to prove their literacy. The test could be administered in any European language. Very few people managed to pass. Details:

https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/white-aust...

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1. graemep ◴[22 Oct 24 14:57 UTC] No.41914929[source]▶
I have been told that relatives (born in Sri Lanka) were able to emigrate to Australia later in the 20th century (I would guess 50s or 60s) because they were able to prove that more than half their ancestry was European. I do not know whether this exempted this from the test or whether there was a simple race based bar to immigration later on.