The Strange Career of Juan Crow

[struggle4progress]

By DIANE McWHORTER
Published: June 16, 2012

... Thanks to H.B. 56 (the “Beason-Hammon Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act”), passed a year ago by the state’s first Republican Legislature since Reconstruction, I am ashamed of being from Alabama.

The contagion of Alabama’s shame became apparent in April, during the oral argument before the Supreme Court on Arizona’s immigration legislation, the test case for several similar state laws aimed primarily at Hispanics. All have been substantially blocked by federal courts, except Alabama’s, most of which went into effect last fall, catastrophically achieving the goal Arizona calls “attrition through enforcement” — also known as “self-deportation.”

As the court seemed to cast a benign eye on the linchpin of the Arizona law — the requirement that the police determine the immigration status of anyone they stop who invites “reasonable suspicion” of illegal residency — I realized how dismayingly reliable Alabama remained as the country’s moral X-ray, exposing the broken places. So on the eve of the Arizona decision, expected this month, it is useful to review what the imposition of “states’ rights” on federal immigration policy looks like in the one state where this has been accomplished. If Alabama, the cradle of the civil rights movement, can retool Jim Crow as Juan Crow, what have we learned?

Since Alabama has no foreign border and a Latino population of less than 4 percent, the main purpose of H.B. 56 seems to be the id-gratification of tribal dominance and its easy political dividends. A bill co-sponsor, State Senator Scott Beason, was frank about his motive: “when their children grow up and get the chance to vote, they vote for Democrats” ...

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/opinion/sunday/no-sweet-home-alabama.html