Modern day black tank military8/29/2023 5 By 1865, virtually all white men were permitted to vote in presidential elections, whereas Black men were permitted to vote in just six states. Sandford ruled that no Black person could become a citizen of the United States and thus had no protections to exercise their right to vote. 3 Even in states such as Pennsylvania, where Quakers preached racial tolerance, free African Americans who were legally permitted to vote rarely exercised this right for fear of retribution. The very first law codifying naturalization in the United States restricted national citizenship to “free white … of good character.” 2 While free Black men were at times permitted to vote in some states, enslaved Black people, who constituted more than 85 percent of the nation’s Black population between 17, were unable to vote anywhere in the United States. For example, according to a new Center for American Progress analysis, in 2016, 9.5 million American adults-most of whom were people of color-lacked full voting rights. ![]() The inevitable result is an American democracy that is distorted in ways that concentrate power and influence. Over the centuries, even as the nation struggled to prohibit the most repugnant forms of exclusion and suppression, it neglected to uproot entrenched structural racism. Moreover, these legal constructs are not some relic of antebellum or Jim Crow past but rather remain part of the fabric of American policymaking. From the start, so many of this country’s laws and public policies, which should serve as the scaffolding that guides progress, were instead designed explicitly to prevent people of color from fully participating. Its founding principles embrace the ideals of freedom and equality, but it is a nation built on the systematic exclusion and suppression of communities of color.
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