Florida is the last state in the nation still to have a constitution marked with one remnant of the Jim Crow era: a rule allowing legislators to ban Asian immigrants from owning land.
This November, voters have a chance to remove the so-called "alien land law" of 1926 from Florida's Constitution. That would complete a nationwide purging of the rules once in force in more than a dozen states."What it does is eliminate the unfortunate vestiges of racial discrimination," said Sen. Steve Geller, D-Cooper City, who persuaded legislators to put it on the fall ballot after years of lobbying his colleagues.
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Passage is not certain. In New Mexico, a similar law had to be placed on the ballot twice before voters threw it out in 2006. That left Florida as the last state with the measure on its books.
You can read more about the Alien Land Acts here.
It saddens me that it has to be put on the ballot at all; discriminatory laws should be removed as a matter of course. Yet another layer of sadness that NM took two tries to remove a law and that passage is uncertain in FL--how can that be? It just shows you cannot underestimate racism in this country--pathetic.
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