Whoopi Goldberg Claims Voting Rights of Black Americans Are ‘Where We Were Under the Emancipation Proclamation’

The View co-host Whoopi Goldberg claimed on Tuesday that, when it comes to voting, Black Americans “are where we were under the Emancipation Proclamation.”

On The View, Goldberg told Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY):

You vowed to call a vote on major voting rights legislation in time for Martin Luther King Day next week. I just want – I want to ask you this because it’s irritating me to the nth degree. Why we still talking about my right as an American to vote?

I still feel like suddenly Black people still are where we were under the Emancipation Proclamation. What is happening? Why are we still fighting this this way? What’s – what’s going to change?

Schumer said that Goldberg was “100 percent right.”

“It’s not just staying the same,” said Schumer. “It’s going to get worse if we don’t do something [about voting rights].”

The Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves in the Confederacy in 1863. Black Americans were granted equal voting rights with the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Democrats have argued that voter ID laws and other Republican voting measures disproportionately affect Black voters, while Republicans maintain Democratic voting proposals would constitute the federal takeover of elections.

Watch above, via ABC.