Ted Cruz (R-TX) loves to dominate a conversation, speak over people, make smarmy comments, and talk in circles to avoid responding to the issue at hand. On Wednesday, five professors who came to speak about racist voter ID laws just weren’t having it.
Sen. Ted Cruz: "What voter I.D. laws are racist?"
Professor Franita Tolson: "Apologies Mr. Cruz, your state of Texas, perhaps." pic.twitter.com/men5LnJgrg
— The Hill (@thehill) September 22, 2021
In that confident way that Cruz has of asking a question he thinks he already has an iron-clad response to, Cruz asked the five professors who have studied voting law as a career, the senator from Texas asked, “in your judgment, are voter ID laws racist?”
Vice Dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs, and Professor of Law at University of Southern California Law School answered by saying “that depends. One thing we have to stop doing is treating all voter ID laws the same.”
Cruz asked which laws are racist and Tolson said “apologies Mr. Cruz, your state of Texas, perhaps?” Cruz did what he also does and spoke over the professor, twisting what she said by responding with  “okay, so the entire state of Texas is racist…” Tolson quickly called him out for being reductive and said that some laws are specifically intended to reduce the power of the minority vote.
Cruz then posed the question to all five professors of law who were responding to questions. Each of them agreed that voter ID laws can, in both intent and practice, be racist, especially those that target communities of color by making it more difficult for poorer communities, which are disproportionately black and brown.
Comments on Twitter showed the deep divide, mostly by white males who think every law affects everyone the same, in response to the exchange between Cruz and the law professors. Read some of their comments below:
