this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2025
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edit: seems like some people interpret “full of” as a mathematical majority which, while it may or might not be true instance to instance, isn’t my intent in posting

feel free to swap in “has a lot of” if that’s more familiar language to you :)

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[–] knighthawk0811@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

i guess, but they voted for that too

[–] spujb@lemmy.cafe 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

the voting rights act was only in 1965. in a significant number of cases, no they did not

the 19th amendment was in 1920. in a significant number of cases, no they could not

it is demonstrably harder to vote if you are poor and harder to vote informedly if you are poor and uneducated all the way through 2025. no they did not vote for this.

thank you for proving exactly why this post needs to exist. class consciousness, not culture war.

[–] ricecake@sh.itjust.works 6 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Those examples are from 105 and 60 years ago.
There are ways to make the point you're going for, but invoking legislation that old doesn't do it.

Am I sympathetic to people who are ignorant and so voted against their own interests? Sure, a bit. A lot of southerners would take issue with trying to defend them with cries of "don't blame them, they're too stupid to agree with me!” though.
Am I sympathetic to people who have been systematically disenfranchised and economically abandoned? Of course, I'm not a monster.

The fact remains that a lot of people in red states earnestly believe in what they vote for. You can talk about class consciousness all you want, but the people fighting the culture doing so because of manipulation by the rich or powerful in a class war does fuck all to help the people loosing said culture war. I'm sure the suicidal trans kid takes great comfort that the people voting to make them illegal are just misled.

They've had every opportunity to inform themselves. Maybe eventually they'll hurt themselves enough to stop fighting the culture war you don't want others to fight.

[–] spujb@lemmy.cafe -2 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

60 years isn’t even close to life expectancy. so we are talking less than a lifetime ago. MLK’s daughter is alive, 62 years old (younger than most people in government) and posting on instagram about the same struggles her father fought.

plus did you even read the part about ongoing class disenfranchisement in 2025 (poor people being kept from voting)?

not even reading the rest of your comment since you couldn’t do the same for me. thanks for being such a genuine participant in this conversation.

[–] ricecake@sh.itjust.works 1 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

I did actually read your comment, I just didn't entirely agree with you you condescending ass.

MLKs daughter never voted without the civil rights act. You forgot to add 18 to the age someone would need to be to have voted before the act passed.
Most of the southern electorate is neither 78 or older, or even 60.
The point was that it's not a convincing argument, not that someone isn't alive who was impacted.

I'm not sure what class disenfranchisement has to do with the part you're angry about. Maybe if you actually read what I said you'd have seen where I mentioned it for the rest of the comment.

If you're not even going to read what people say, you have no grounds to complain that people aren't "being a genuine participant".

[–] spujb@lemmy.cafe 0 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

me: lists evidence of voter suppression in 1920, 1965, and today

you: THAT WAS OVER 60 YEARS AGO

me: i don’t think you saw the part where i said “today”

you: name calling

i love this website so much

[–] ricecake@sh.itjust.works 1 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah, you're not a good faith conversational actor. Go back and reread what I initially wrote. So far you're responding more to being called an ass for being rude than to "ignoring a culture war means dead trans kids".

[–] spujb@lemmy.cafe 0 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

yeah :( exactly. this conversation was about voting suppression and somehow you immediately jumped to the assumption that me recognizing that there’s an oppressed minority of good people (INCLUDING TRANS FOLKS BY THE WAY) who have by and large been kept from democratic self-determination through systemic forces means…

(shuffles chronically online internet argument deck)

that i want to ignore trans rights?

for the record, no, i believe the opposite. i believe that my trans neighbors (and family, fyi) in the south exist and are worthy of recognition and support, in spite of the voting bloc they are surrounded by and historically been kept from engaging with.

i hope this is informative and corrects your misconstruals. you are shadow boxing against a position that i don’t think anyone here has. feel free to ask any questions as i am willing to give the benefit of the doubt that this was an honest misunderstanding.

[–] ricecake@sh.itjust.works 3 points 5 hours ago (3 children)

Feel free to ask me any questions as well, since I'm gathering you still didn't read anything I wrote.

I actually thought you were interested in having a discussion for a minute and not just indignantly misinterpreting everything to take offense at.

I'll say it one more time: ignoring a culture war being fought against you doesn't make it go away, even if it's just a proxy for a class war. Southerners are fully capable of making informed decisions, and at some point you just stop having sympathy for the ones who could choose to be better but don't. It sucks that some people can't choose and get hurt along the way too. Maybe the misinformed will eventually hurt themselves hard enough to stop fighting a culture war against the disenfranchised at someone else's behest, but I don't have a lot of sympathy for those that choose to hurt others.
An oppressed minority still means that there's an oppressive majority who voted to hurt themselves.

[–] spujb@lemmy.cafe 1 points 4 hours ago

Southerners are fully capable of making informed decisions, and at some point you just stop having sympathy for the ones who could choose to be better but don’t.

There’s another confusion! I don’t know where you got the idea that this post was about sympathy for bad people when explicitly it talks about good people in the post. Super important! This is about solidarity across class lines. I would never and have never denied this and all of my comments here reflect that.

[–] spujb@lemmy.cafe 0 points 4 hours ago

An oppressed minority still means that there’s an oppressive majority who voted to hurt themselves.

Yup!

[–] spujb@lemmy.cafe 0 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

I’ll say it one more time: ignoring a culture war being fought against you doesn’t make it go away, even if it’s just a proxy for a class war.

I agree! I don’t see why you brought this up but I agree! Lol.

[–] ricecake@sh.itjust.works 1 points 12 minutes ago

class consciousness, not culture war.

Because you were talking about culture war and I was responding to you?

[–] spujb@lemmy.cafe 0 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

thanks for the personal attack i guess lol you are so cool online wow so cool

still you act like 60 years is some kind of insurmountable gap in history and that’s so cringe. the echoes of slavery and native american genocide echo from before 1776 through today. MLK didn’t magically die and then fix every barrier Black people suffered in life. that’s pretty basic history lol.

I’m not sure what class disenfranchisement has to do with the part you’re angry about.

all of it you silly goose. disenfranchisement means “depriving someone of the right to vote.” when the poor are depreived of the right to vote (not directly by law, but indirectly by systemic barriers), it means shocker they don’t vote. this entire thread is in response to someone saying “i guess but they voted for that too.” that’s the context you butted into, i operate on the pretty fair premise that you knew that and read the thread. :)

[–] ricecake@sh.itjust.works 1 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Who said the lingering effects of slavery didn't have an impact? You said the voting rights act and universal suffrage being recent meant that a lot of people in the south were disenfranchised before them, hence they couldn't vote for the way things are. Most people in the south did not have their voting rights impacted by policy before those to effect because they weren't alive.
That's why I didn't say systemic racism doesn't exist, or that economic or political disenfranchisement doesn't exist, I said that those aren't compelling evidence to make the valid point you're going for. I then proceeded to talk about other stuff related to your post, which you would know if you bothered to read instead of assuming that anyone that didn't entirely agree with you must be disingenuous.

[–] spujb@lemmy.cafe 0 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (1 children)

hence they couldn’t vote for the way things are

and still can’t. voter repression still happens. in 2025. said it before. you ignored it. brought it back up again. you called me an ass. said it a third time, and you called me bad faith.

i gave a timeline of problems (A B C) and you ignored the most recent, most relevant, date in the timeline (C) three times. three times you ignored C. just to be clear. my point is C. the current ongoing crisis is C. C is the issue i am concerned about in making this entire post. C is proof that the progress of A and B has not come to fruition.

thank you for your time.

[–] ricecake@sh.itjust.works 1 points 5 hours ago (2 children)

Can you point out where I said it doesn't? Are you even actually reading?

You act as though I railed against the notion of voter suppression when one sentence said one part of what you said wasn't compelling for the point you were making.

I didn't ignore your point, I fucking agreed with it a few sentences later. I called you an ass because you angrily said you didn't read the reply after one sentence and accused me of being disingenuous.

[–] spujb@lemmy.cafe 0 points 4 hours ago

Perhaps what you misunderstand is the concept of intersectional disenfranchisement. If I am a Black woman, and my mother was a Black woman, and her mother was a Black woman, then statistically and historically in the U.S., only 1/3 of us had the opportunity to vote in our daughter’s best interest due to the compounded effects of anti-Black and anti-woman status quos (not to mention other factors like anti-poverty, anti-queerness, religious discrimination, migrant discrimination, abuse of the the felony system to make free labor, and many more). When I speak today, I carry not just my own voice, but the silenced ones of those who came before me, denied the right to shape the future they birthed.

And because of that generational silencing, my daughter and I live with the consequences — in the schools we attend, the care we receive, the safety we’re afforded, and the doors still closed to us. We did not vote for this.

[–] spujb@lemmy.cafe 0 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago) (1 children)

You are right you didn’t say it doesn’t, not would I ever shove words in your mouth like that.

What you did say is “[your examples showing an ongoing issue between before 1920-today] are from 60 years ago” blatantly false! 2025 is today. ;)

You act as though I railed against the notion of voter suppression

No I act as though, under a comment affirming the dignity of the oppressed despite their separation from democratic self-determination, you started chirping about how I’m ignoring trans people or something. That’s pretty disingenuous to me, sorry not sorry.

[–] ricecake@sh.itjust.works 1 points 15 minutes ago

Fucking hell, let me copy it for you again:

Those examples are from 105 and 60 years ago.
There are ways to make the point you're going for, but invoking legislation that old doesn't do it.

Do you see how maybe that was more of a comment about a weak example rather than disagreement?

You were "~~chirping~~" ~~squawking~~ ~~blathering~~ talking about how we need class consciousness rather than culture war. Maybe if you actually read what I wrote from a non-confrontational view you could understand that I was saying "victims of a culture war can't ignore it".

[–] knighthawk0811@lemmy.world -1 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

people are changing the gerrymandering lines at some regularity and those people and their changes are quite specifically put in place on purpose and the voters continue to go down that road because they want the result of having more voting power. so yeah, they voted for it

[–] spujb@lemmy.cafe 1 points 13 hours ago

partially false, you rightfully fault government officials for allowing gerrymandering but voters are never given the choice. the majority of voters oppose gerrymandering.