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

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250 points rcarmo | 1 comments | 21 Oct 24 21:29 UTC | HN request time: 0.383s | source
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az226 ◴[22 Oct 24 08:06 UTC] No.41912217[source]▶
While several of these questions are poorly designed and some might even have typos, it’s much more telling to see what the scoring guide says. If the key has built-in leniency for different interpretations, and was rushed out then the test is not as bad.

But given that tests like these for their purpose carry serious impact in democracy, the test should not have been rushed, and made sure to be correct and relevant, which points to the conclusion that it was made to exclude people and that maybe the scorers looked at the names of people and where they lived as part of the determination, making it easy to nix an applicant based on bogus ambiguous questions.

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llamaimperative ◴[22 Oct 24 13:22 UTC] No.41913989[source]▶
It’s wild the type of contortions a person can fold themselves into instead of saying, “yeah this was meant to fuck people out of their rights.”

There should be no test at all, rushing was not the problem, and the likelihood of prejudice was the entire point.

Because it was made by racists. Who were trying to achieve racist goals.

Much clearer this way.

replies(1): >>41915376 #
1. JohnMakin ◴[22 Oct 24 15:37 UTC] No.41915376[source]▶
> It’s wild the type of contortions a person can fold themselves into instead of saying, “yeah this was meant to fuck people out of their rights.”

I'm mixed race from a family that is predominantly made up of PoC - these conversations used to infuriate me, now they just fascinate me. To me, trying to understand what motivates such lines of thinking is really important. Is it denial, naivete, rationalization, or is it something more insidious? I can never tell. Particularly the viewpoint, which is surprisingly popular amongst supposedly educated people, that racism doesn't really exist anymore/isn't a big deal anymore, which at least from my perspective, seems to fuel these types of comments. To the GP comment, I'm not trying to tear you down, I'm actually quite interested in what people commenting stuff like this have to say, because I truly cannot understand.