When it comes to access to political participation and voting, it’s been well documented that in some areas and localities around the country, many Blacks have been disenfranchised at the hands of Whites. However, as the New York Times reports, there is one instance in which the opposite is alleged to have happened -- Blacks trying to disenfranchise White voters:

The Justice Department’s main focus is Ike Brown, a local power broker whose imaginative electoral tactics have for 20 years caused whisperings from here to the state capital in Jackson. Mr. Brown, a twice-convicted felon, the chairman of the Noxubee County Democratic Executive Committee and its undisputed political boss, is accused by the federal government of orchestrating — with the help of others — “relentless voting-related racial discrimination” against whites, whom blacks outnumber by more than 3 to 1 in the county.

His goal, according to the government: keeping black politicians — ones supported by Mr. Brown, that is — in office. To do that, the department says, he and his allies devised a watertight system for controlling the all-determining Democratic primary, much as segregationists did decades ago.

Mr. Brown is accused in the lawsuit and in supporting documents of paying and organizing notaries, some of whom illegally marked absentee ballots or influenced how the ballots were voted; of publishing a list of voters, all white, accompanied by a warning that they would be challenged at the polls; of importing black voters into the county; and of altering racial percentages in districts by manipulating the registration rolls.

I think it’s important to keep these events in perspective. If in fact Mr. Brown is guilty of these allegations, they are reprehensible and have no place in the American democratic system, to be sure. Disenfranchisement of potential voters -- of whatever race or ethnicity -- is illegal, period.

At the same time, I would like to ask why is it that numerous other instances in which voting irregularities and disenfranchisement against Blacks and other people of color have been alleged and frequently substantiated, most notably in the 2000 and 2004 national elections, were never prosecuted or even followed through on by the Justice Department?

If the Justice Department is legitimately serious about stamping out voter disenfranchisement, they need to be paying much more attention to the myriad of examples in which Blacks and other people of color continue to be denied their constitutional right to vote, rather than picking an isolated incident such as this to prosecute.