Pookleblinky: Washington, like Oregon, state owes its easy voting system to restrictive housing covenants. Until 1968, Black people and Jewish people simply could not rent or buy homes. depts.washington.edu/civilr/coven...

Washington, like Oregon, state owes its easy voting system to restrictive housing covenants. Until 1968, Black people and Jewish people simply could not rent or buy homes. depts.washington.edu/civilr/coven...

Racial Restrictive Covenants - Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project depts.washington.edu

"No person or persons of Asiatic, African or Negro blood, lineage, or extraction shall be permitted to occupy a portion of said property." In 1926, SCOTUS upheld such language as enforceable. 22 years later, in 1948, it ruled such language valid but no longer enforceable.

Despite that law having been struck down in 1968 in Article 8 of the Civil Rights Act, properties across Washington still have such language in their deeds.

Today, Washington State is 4.4% Black. The national average is about 14%. Washington is very, very white, by design: in living memory, it was illegal to rent or own a home there while Black.

Washington, like Oregon, has painless voting because it accomplished Black disenfranchisement by other means: it literally made it impossible to live there while Black.

That easy, painless voting came via violent discrimination *elsewhere* in the legal code.

When Oregonians praise how easy their voting system is, how painless it is, they are praising a voting system that did not have to suppress Black voters because *other laws long ago suppressed a Black population from existing there*

While housing covenants played a part in limiting Washington state’s black population levels, similar covenants were not at uncommon in other states with higher levels of black populations. For example, Detroit neighborhoods were very segregated through the use of covenants.

I linked to the Black Exclusion Laws, right? en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_...

Oregon black exclusion laws - Wikipediaen.m.wikipedia.org

Washington became a separate territory in 1853. The Oregon territory exclusion laws played a part in what became Washington but were not repeated there.

Alien Land Laws, though. depts.washington.edu/civilr/alien...

White Supremacy and the Alien Land Laws of Washington State - Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project depts.washington.edu In 1960 a member of the Washington State Committee for the Repeal of the Alien Land Law delivered a campaign speech highlighting, among other things, the injustice done to one Japanese American family...

Notably: "By eschewing the “whites only” language of the naturalization laws, alien land laws were written in seemingly race neutral terms."

If you can't see how the law's intended target of Chinese immigrants, also affected Black people, that's not my problem.

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