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Voting and African Americans

Letter to the editor of the New York Times, by Dave Silver
21 August 2000

Editor, The New York Times 229 West 43rd Street New York, N.Y. 10036

Dear Editor,

Several letters appeared yesterday under the heading Can Blacks Afford Not to Vote. A more appropriate heading would have been Will Voting for the Democrats or Republicans Make a Significant Difference in the Lives of Most African-Americans.

One letter invokes the name of Martin Luther King Jr. and his fight for the franchise for which "he fought so hard to protect for them." However, King advocated a rejection of those Parties and candidates that were not in the best interests of his people.

Another letter spoke of Vice-Presidential nominee Joseph Lieberman's "commitment to racial equality, progress and the prosperity of African-Americans." This flies in the face of Lieberman's support of the death penalty and U.S. initiated wars such as Iraq and Bosnia. In both cases African-Americans and people of color have been executed in prison death houses or killed on the battlefield in numbers far exceeding their percent of the population.

Sincerely
Dave Silver