The clash in Cambridge about ID and racial profiling, about identity and expectation and respect was just a snippet of our culture's ongoing meta-narrative about race.
Studies have already shown a significant link between support for voter ID and racial discrimination, among both lawmakers and white voters in general.
The study, conducted by Prof Matt Barreto of the University of Washington, aimed to determine whether there would be significant racial disparities in the voter ID law's impact.
The South African government established ID systems with racial categories to maintain apartheid.
Holder earned praise for his achievements in civil rights, going to bat against voter ID laws and racial profiling, and speaking openly about racism in the United States.
Possession of a valid piece of ID differed among racial subgroups, where 13.2percentt of Black respondents and 14.9percentt of Latino respondents did not have appropriate ID, compared to only 7.3percentt of white respondents.
This has led to a barrage of coordinated attacks on fundamental rights, such as women's access to reproductive care, and countless new barriers to participating in our democracy, like voter ID requirements and racial profiling laws.
But a study currently under review by Zoltan Hajnal, Nazita Lajevardi and Lindsay Nielson shows that voter ID laws increase racial gaps in turnout, and skew turnout toward the political right (the chart come from a newer version paper provided to me by Hajnal).
In addition, because they used Census Bureau data, they were limited in the scope of analysis they could perform about the racial and partisan effects of voter ID.
An earlier study by political scientists David Wilson and Paul Brewer finds that racial resentment increases support for voter ID laws (see chart), as does regular Fox News viewership and believes that fraud is widespread.
