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Enbar Toledano

excerpted from: Enbar Toledano, Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act and its Place in post-racial America, 61 Emory Law Journal 389-434 (2011-2012)(322 Footnotes)(Student Note)

Issacharoff suggests that a lack of modern examples of racial discrimination in the voting realm will undermine the constitutionality of section 5. A thorough examination of modern election law, however, casts doubt upon the belief that racial discrimination has been eradicated in the voting rights arena. Perhaps the problem is that today's discrimination would be unrecognizable to someone still on the lookout for Jim Crow laws. The metamorphosis of discrimination does not, however, signal its end. Simply put, minorities are no longer exclusively black, and discrimination is no longer exclusively Southern. This Part will examine the changing makeup of America's minorities since 1965, discuss the problems they face in today's society, and identify modern examples of racially discriminatory voting laws to demonstrate the continued need for section 5.