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House Judiciary goes ballistic on Tanner
House Judiciary Committee Democrats criticized the head of the Justice Department’s voting rights section today for saying that “our society is such that minorities don’t become elderly the way white people do-they die first.”
John Tanner, the head of the section that was created after the Voting Rights Act of 1965, tried to apologize for the remarks.
“My explanation of the data came across in a hurtful way, which I deeply regret,” Tanner said.
But Rep. Artur Davis, D-Ala., said that was no excuse. He accused him of using faulty statistics to support a faulty stereotype.
Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., the civil rights leader who helped press for the Voting Rights Act of 1965, said he was “appalled” by what Tanner has done to voting rights section at the Justice Department.
Since 2001, the Justice Department has brought two cases alleging voter discrimination against African Americans. Neither case was in the South, according to Julie Fernandes, senior policy analyst at the Leadership Conference for Civil Rights.
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