Comicomment: Invisible wall blocks minority voters from ballot box

Special: Commentary

(ECNS)--The 2022 midterm election exposed an America of deep divides over race and ethnicity. A report from The Sentencing Project found that state-level voting bans have a disproportionate impact on Black and Latino voters. According to the report, "One in 19 African Americans of voting age is disenfranchised, a rate 3.5 times that of non-African Americans." The US claims to champion openness and inclusiveness. It declares that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are inalienable rights all men are endowed with, and that the American dream is out there for all who set out to chase it. Fifty-nine years ago, Martin Luther King, Jr. said in his “I Have a Dream” speech that “America has given its colored people a bad check, a check that has come back marked ‘insufficient funds’.” More than half a century on, the situation remains the same. African Americans are still fighting a long and uphill battle in striving for equal rights with White people.