THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, July 6, 1995 TAG: 9507060478
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: CHARLISE LYLES
LENGTH: Medium: 64 lines
Seang-Hy Sary, a seventh-grader at Jay Cooke Middle School in Philadelphia, appreciates the importance and power of the right to vote.
``My family is so lucky to have found the liberty they so dearly wanted here in the United States,'' the child of Cambodian parents wrote in the Independence Day edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer. ``We are grateful for the opportunity to be educated, to vote and to speak out concerning any grievances we may have.''
I read Sary's words during my Fourth of July visit to the city of Brotherly Love where all this business about rights was started more than 200 years ago.
While a panoply of liberty worshipers paraded along John F. Kennedy Boulevard, fireworks burst in blooms of glittery color and former disco diva Donna Summer sang on the waterfront, Sary's simple affection for a fundamental American right remained the center of my celebration.
In fact, Sary had me hoping that a U.S. Supreme Court decision last week would stimulate a renewed appreciation among African Americans for the power of the vote.
The high court's 5-4 ruling effectively outlawed the use of race as ``the predominant factor'' in drawing political districts.
The decision deals a potential blow to majority-black districts across the country that were redrawn under the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to increase minority representation.
African-American and other leaders moved quickly to denounce the ruling as a major setback.
Not much can be done about it now.
But it can serve as a mighty wake-up call to all Americans who have become way too jaded about one of the most precious rights given in the Constitution.
In recent years, dreadful examples of African-American voter apathy have surfaced in our backyard: The May 1994 Chesapeake City Council election left the nine-member council with only one black representative for the first time in 24 years.
Voter turnout didn't rise above 37 percent in the seven precincts with large numbers of black voters. ``Damn shame'' in a city that is 27 percent black, said Mayor William E. Ward.
Ward and others blamed voter apathy on the ``myth of progress,'' that all is well for African Americans. That may be the best explanation for middle-class minorities who don't bother to go to the polls.
But in poorer neighborhoods, African Americans and whites alike, the problem is deeper than apathy or indifference. It is a spiritual disenfranchisement that grips folks soul-deep. They simply cannot fathom that they have the power to change the status quo simply by placing a ballot in a counting machine.
Perhaps they can be awakened from this torpor by the ghosts of dirt-poor freedom fighters like Fannie Lou Hammer of Mississippi or Norfolk's Evelyn Butts, who put it on the line in the 1960s to strike down Virginia's poll tax.
Community activists, African American in particular, should seize the court's decision as an opportunity to renew voter education and registration efforts.
Let those old ghosts rise from the dead. by CNB