"Two New Reports (Further) Debunk Right-Wing Media Claims That Voter ID is "Colorblind""

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Two New Reports (Further) Debunk Right-Wing Media Claims That Voter ID is "Colorblind"

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2012/07/23/two-new-reports-further-debunk-right-wing-media/187279

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Last week, two new reports -- released by the Brennan Center of Justice at the NYU School of Law and the University of Delaware's Center for Political Communication, respectively -- further undermined the conservative media's discredited claims that voter ID laws do not have a discriminatory impact on persons of color and are not intended to be discriminatory on the basis of race. These reports are timely because as restrictive voting rules in conservative-leaning states increasingly materialize, civil rights advocates are noting that these state laws look very much like poll taxes- voter suppression tactics long prohibited. In response, the right-wing media has recycled multiple messages to disavow the impermissible racial discrimination of these laws.

Right-wing media try many different smokescreens in addition to just denying the racial effect of voter ID laws and redistricting altogether. For example, they have disputed the veracity of data to the contrary, argued that these tactics are not in fact barriers, and raised the specter of voter fraud, which experts have demonstrated is practically non-existent. However, it is still the first defense -- that these efforts have no racial effect -- which feeds most effectively into the right wing's preferred "colorblind" narrative.

This right-wing media denial of the racial effect usually has two components in an attempt to whitewash voter suppression, claiming that whatever effect these laws have on communities of color is wholly incidental. That is, there may be a discriminatory impact, but there is no discriminatory intent. Although the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal may have been the most recent mainstream purveyor of this message -- condemning any criticism of the recent wave of conservative-backed voter ID laws as "racial politics" -- they are far from alone in the right-wing media.

Brennan Center Report Undermines Denials of Discriminatory Impact

Fox News' The Five has taken the lead in dismissing the claim that voter suppression in the form of voter ID and redistricting will have an impermissible racial impact, going so far as to call Attorney General Holder's recent comments to the contrary "racist" and "race-baiting" before denying the effect through mockery, as co-hosts Eric Bolling and Greg Gutfeld did on July 11:

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