Racism keeps the right to vote from American islanders

A  WEEK ago the country commemorated the 50th anniversary of the civil rights battle of the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. A motion pictures was made about that seminal moment in American history a half-century ago when police bludgeoned the non-violent marchers. President Obama gave a rousing speech. A few months after the march across the bridge, the Voting Rights Act was passed giving the right to vote to all Americans no matter your race.

Well ... not quite. Four million American citizens still don't have the right to vote. They are the residents of our American territories, Puerto Rico, Guam and American Samoa. 

Comedian John Oliver did a funny bit - biting sarcasm, actually - on this issue on his program last Sunday. Funny, but sad. Shameful, really.

The residents of these territories have higher turnout on their voting days than mainland voters. And their votes don't even vote. In Guam, Oliver points out, one out of eight residents are veterans of the U.S. military -- and if one of these veterans needs medical care they have to travel over 3,000 miles to Hawaii to visit a V.A. hospital.

And the situation is even worst for American Samoans who can't even become American ciitizens. I would venture to bet that American Samoa has more players in the NFL in proportion to their total population than any other state in the Union. How much more American can you get than that?

A group of Samoans are challenging the ruling that denies their status as quasi-Americans. I hope more Americans get behind them especially since that ruling is basically racist in nature. Ah, yes, the R-word, but please view the video and read the links and you be the judge. But how else can you describe the Supreme Court 1901 ruling (Downes v. Bidwell) says the island residents could not become full-fledged Americans because they are “inhabited by alien races, differing from us in religion, customs, laws, methods of taxation, and modes of thought, the administration of government and justice, according to Anglo-Saxon principles ..."

If you want to help undo this injustice, write your congressman to introduce a bill to give the residents of U.S. Territories the right to vote for their Commander-In-Chief. With their service in the U.S. military and loyalty to America, they certainly deserve that right.

American Samoa