On the Sept. 6 edition of NPR’s “Morning Edition with Steve Inskeep,” Morehouse College professor and political commentator Marc Lamont Hill discussed uninformed voters.
Last week on “Morning Edition,” NBA legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar suggested that uninformed voters should not vote.
He tells the host to stop encouraging people who do not want to vote, to go out and vote.
“Ignorance is not something that lends itself to a meaningful discussion,” he states. “Some of these people really shouldn’t vote, because they don’t know what the issues are.”
In the clip, Hill says that he is concerned about Abdul-Jabbar’s comments because of the racist history to prevent Black people from voting.
“There is a long history of saying that certain people shouldn’t be voting,” Hill starts. “The people who are often left out of these conversations are Black and brown. [This rhetoric] has often become a way to exclude Black and brown people.”
Hill mentions the literacy tests in the South that did not measure ability to read and write but instead determined race.
In addition, he states that Republican candidates win because of Black and brown voters not turning out to vote.
