For the latest installment of their documentary series, Human Footprint, PBS took a look at the history of cotton from both a political and scientific perspective. On the former, host and evolutionary biologist Shane Campbell-Staton warned that there attempts to “reinstitute many of the barriers that long kept African-Americans from wielding political power.”
The warnings began with former judge and current activist Faya Ora Rose Touré telling her radio listeners, “I want to remind us again that August the 6th is the anniversary-- I think it's the 58th anniversary-- of the passage of the Voting Rights Act, and I know what y'all are saying. ‘What do we have to celebrate?’ You know, the Shelby case in 2013 actually gutted the pre-clearance of the Voting Rights Act, but just because they gutted it, we cannot gut our faith. We cannot gut our struggle and our movement.”
A few minutes later, Campbell-Staton was with biological oceanographer Craig McClain and the two were looking at a series of maps. The maps showed a connection between geological formations, cotton production in 1859, the percentage of the population that was enslaved in 1860, the black percentage of the population in 2017, and how counties voted in the 2008 presidential election. The maps led McClain to proclaim:
When I sort of heard about this, I really went out and searched for, like, the maps and kept finding more and more patterns that reflected that, and so, for example, this is obesity prevalence in females in 2011 across the South, which follows the Black Belt as well. I think, of the maps that we've looked at so far, this one may be one of the most alarming, right? This is a now map. This map wouldn't exist if there wasn't healthcare disparities, right, if there wasn't economic disparities that we still haven't yet addressed.
Naturally, the two biologists didn’t offer any policy solutions. Campbell-Staton, however, did instill some fear-mongering into discussion during a voiceover, “Today, efforts are underway to dismantle what remains of the Voting Rights Act and reinstitute many of the barriers that long kept African-Americans from wielding political power in the South. So Craig thinks that seeing some geology in today's electoral maps is actually kind of reassuring.”
They are not as evident by the fact that Campbell-Staton did not even bother to attempt to name just one. As for McClain’s optimism, “When the blue belt goes away. Then there's real cause for concern; it may mean that the voting rights are being diminished of African-Americans in the South.”
If or, more accurately, when, the blue belt does not disappear, will PBS will almost certainly not produce a follow-up documentary on how Republicans are not suppressing the vote and all the hysteria that surrounded their electoral reform laws.
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Here is a transcript for the August 9 show:
PBS Human Footprint: The Ground Below
8/9/2023
9:37 PM ET
SHANE CAMPBELL-STATON: As an attorney, she won more than a billion dollars for Black farmers in a landmark trial against the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and she was Alabama's first Black woman judge.
FAYA ORA ROSE TOURE: I want to remind us again that August the 6th is the anniversary-- I think it's the 58th anniversary-- of the passage of the Voting Rights Act, and I know what y'all are saying. "What do we have to celebrate?" You know, the Shelby case in 2013 actually gutted the pre-clearance of the Voting Rights Act, but just because they gutted it, we cannot gut our faith. We cannot gut our struggle and our movement.
…
9:45 PM ET
CAMPBELL-STATON: The idea that there’s, like, a single through line that links piles of dead cretaceous organisms to voting patterns—
CRAIG MCCLAIN: Right.
CAMPBELL-STATON: -- across geographic space, is--is phenomenal. I've never seen anything-- I--I've just literally never seen anything like this before.
MCCLAIN: When I sort of heard about this, I really went out and searched for, like, the maps and kept finding more and more patterns that reflected that, and so, for example, this is obesity prevalence in females in 2011 across the South, which follows the Black Belt as well.
I think, of the maps that we've looked at so far, this one may be one of the most alarming, right? This is a now map. This map wouldn't exist if there wasn't healthcare disparities, right, if there wasn't economic disparities that we still haven't yet addressed.
We wouldn't see evidence of the Black Belt; we wouldn't see evidence of this ancient coastline if we had been better as a society dealing with these issues.
CAMPBELL-STATON: Today, efforts are underway to dismantle what remains of the Voting Rights Act and reinstitute many of the barriers that long kept African-Americans from wielding political power in the South. So Craig thinks that seeing some geology in today's electoral maps is actually kind of reassuring.
MCCLAIN: When the blue belt goes away. Then there's real cause for concern; it may mean that the voting rights are being diminished of African-Americans in the South.
