Based on longstanding efforts to squelch their voice at the polls, people of color in the United States must prepare themselves for the political power they stand to gain through population increase—or risk being ruled by a White minority like the old apartheid system in South Africa.
That was the warning that Gloria J. Browne-Marshall, a civil rights attorney and constitutional law professor at John Jay College of the City University of New York, delivered recently during a talk to promote her new book, “The Voting Rights War: The NAACP and the Ongoing Fight for Justice.”
Pointing out how projections show that non-Whites will constitute a majority in the United States by the year 2045, Browne-Marshall said people of color should consider the political clout that will come about as a result.
“We have to think about it now because other people already have,” Browne-Marshall said during a recent “book rap” at the National Press Club.
“If this is new to you it’s not new to a people who are fiercely fighting this ideal of democracy if it means sharing power, because they know 2045 is coming.
“That’s why we need the progressives in action,” Browne-Marshall said. “That’s what the NAACP was, a combination of progressive Whites and African Americans, and then their organization inspired other organizations for Latinos and for Asians, for other people to also fight for their legal rights.”
Browne-Marshall’s remarks, which come at a time of sharp political and racial divisions, portrayed the NAACP as an exemplar for future political and legal fights.
