🧩 BND Motif Index · M1618
Jim Crow holdover
A standing law or rule is said to be a relic of Jim Crow, written to keep Black citizens from the ballot or from power, and still doing that work until it is struck down.
🕵️ Theories🗂️ Elections🗂️ Crime and punishment
- 2claims filed under it
- 1center show it came up on
- 2right shows it came up on
- 1claim retold online
⚠️ A story people tell, not a claim that it's true.
A motif is the shape of a story as its tellers tell it, named the way a folklorist names a tale type, so the same story told about other people, by the other side or in another year lands in the same place. Some of the claims below are true, many are false. Arguing against a story is often a story of its own, its answer (Voter fraud is answered by Voter suppression, Lawfare by No one is above the law), and we file it there; where no answer has a motif yet, the arguments against a story sit with its tellings.
🪜 Its family
what it rests on, what rests on it, and the motifs that answer it
🔗 goes with: 🧩 Voter suppression
🎙️ Who it came up with
the shows we follow where its claims came up (0 left-leaning, 1 center, 2 right-leaning so far), colored by the show's lean; the bar is how many of its claims each one heard
- center
- right-leaning
"Came up on" means one of its claims was heard on the show: told, reported or argued against. We don't yet mark which. Show leans are our own grouping of the shows we transcribe.
🗣️ In so many words
the words that carry it
💬 the tellers' own words: “codifying the end of Jim Crow-era disenfranchisement rules” “Jim Crow holdover” “The filibuster is not in our constitution. It's a Jim Crow relic.” “the filibuster, which is not in the Constitution, it's a Jim Crow relic, it is leading to gridlock” “Voters just abolished this Jim Crow-era policy.”
🧶 Its claims
what's been told in this shape, in our words, by who told it: newest first in each; a claim's dots are the shows it came up on, in their lean's color (point at them for their names)
Told on the left 0
claims heard on left-leaning shows, and no right-leaning one
🦗 No claim heard only on the left so far.
Told on the right 1
claims heard on right-leaning shows, and no left-leaning one
- 2026-11-05 “The filibuster is a Jim Crow relic that prevents necessary progress in the country.” 3
Retold online 1
claims many people posted in their own words
- 2026-11-05 “Virginia voters passed an amendment to restore voting rights to people with felony convictions upon their release from prison.”
M1618 · first seen 2026-11-05 · last 2026-11-06 · what this is · how the index works