#black literacy tests

[alwaysbewoke]

[lovevalley45]

i have seen the stats that show that black voters for harris made up a far larger percentage of voters in their demographic than any other n i have to say,,, we supporting our own out here but also. this may be a ‘our experiences are not universal’ but if i even think of not voting i get not so kindly reminded by my mother that black ppl were still bein denied their right to vote during my grandparent’s lifetimes,,,

[perrysoup]

“We should have literacy tests”

The real translation is: “let’s make white people think they are doing what “the blacks” need to prove they can be trusted. We will do this while simultaneously making their schools underfunded and their lives overpoliced to the point of breathing being a felony, and giving only them tests that white people don’t need to solve. We are the good guys”

But go off about how we should require everyone to have these while making sure they can’t pass them.

Also, a reminder, the wording was chosen specifically so even if they wrote the correct answer, the voting staff could argue they read it wrong and their answer is wrong.

[lizardsfromspace]

One of the interchangeable ghouls running in 2024 is talking up his plan to tie voting rights to passing a civics test & it's amazing watching people discuss this in neutral terms

A lot of the response to this is "oh, that's great, next let's restore civics education in schools", but the entire point is that they're not going to improve civics education. The age range gives a hint: this is a ploy to disenfranchise young voters, by, presumably, demanding they pass a test the state won't train them for in order to get rights granted by the states. It's like saying "oh, yes, literacy tests for voting makes sense, it'll really inspire the South to educate black people". It uh. Didn't. And I think many of the people agreeing know that and support it bc it's disenfranchising, but some seem to just agree bc it's "COMMON SENSE" and they're not digging any deeper?

This would be a civics test authored by a far right administration, to be clear. The tests we give immigrants are already propagandistic nonsense, imagine that in the hands of the "slavery taught people valuable skills" crowd

Also, his amendment would allow young people who can't pass the test to vote if they join the military. This is a "service guarantees citizenship" amendment

[visenyaism]

genuine question why are charter schools to blame for decreased literacy in your opinion? Because of the remote learning aspect or smth else also?? I went to one & honestly did better with it than traditional hs but I had very high reading comprehension already, had no busses in my area & no parent that could drive me to school so it was a pretty specific situation where that environment worked out better for me

Well I’m glad it worked out for you but institutionally charter schools are so detrimental to public education. Let me explain why:

The principle behind charter schools, that increased competition will force public schools to be better, frames education as a product rather than a public utility. If education quality is determined by the free market, the winners and losers are children, which is just a morally unacceptable outcome to me.

Shouldn’t ignore that the school choice movement started as a way to advocate for the perpetuity of segregation. On average charters are more racially segregated than publics.

The way in which public schools receive funding varies state to state, but most states do some amount of funding per pupil. What that means is that when students switch from public schools to charter schools they take that per people funding with them if you’re leaving an underperforming public school that’s underperforming because it’s underfunded you are making the problem worse. Not everyone can leave.

Charter schools can legally kick students out if they want to. This means if students stop performing well, or if disabled or english-language learner students need extra support, they can just be removed. A lot of “charters have higher test scores” is just charters only admitted high-performing and low-need students, which puts even more of a strain on public schools.

They are really unregulated. Many “charter-friendly” states have minimal accountability measures for charter schools in a way that leads to many running the gamut between negligence to committing literal fraud instead of providing free and appropriate public education. Charter networks are multibillion dollar businesses this system gets exploited by private equity all the time.

That lack of regulation or accountability also shows up in disciplinary outcomes. The school to prison pipeline is already unforgivably bad in a public environment, but unregulated charter schools often implement draconian “zero tolerance” policies that result in black and brown students getting treated like they’re in a police state. Public schools can’t suspend or expel you or call the cops on you for how you wear your hair. They can’t escalate to dramatic consequences as quickly or do a 3 strikes demerit system. There are no legal guardrails against this in charters.

Often exist to circumnavigate teachers’ union contracts and other labor laws. This means teachers at charters are often overworked, underpaid, micromanaged, and have EXTREMELY high turnover. The additional strain on teachers and overrepresentation of first-teachers who burn out in the system and get replaced makes for bad educational environments in a lot of places.

All of these are even more of a problem because of the way that charter networks like KIPP were marketed as a way to fix public schools in black and brown areas, and have just kneecapped public schools while providing students with subpar educational outcomes instead.

[johannestevans]

The Real Harm in “Harmful Content”

Exploring the true harm in “harmful content” and “problematic” media.

Photo by Ethan Will via Pexels.

We live, unfortunately, in a world increasingly defined by people’s lack of media literacy.

It isn’t as simple as people not reading, because people do — as schools and universities increasingly cut or allocate resources away from English literature, history, and other humanities, students are robbed of their opportunities to exercise their critical thinking stills; in the USA, “balanced literacy” strategies all but ensure many children don’t learn the vital skills to read text in the first place; many CinemaSins and Ending Explained- style videos are critiqued for their contributions to these wider cultural concerns of anti-intellectualism.

What defines this anti-intellectualism, and the culture that goes with it?

Every film or book or article or opinion I don’t understand intuitively and immediately is “pretentious”. It’s superior and self-involved — it’s a waste of time. I might make snarky comments about black-and-white Serbian films from a hundred years ago shot from the perspective of a pigeon, and I come up with that hypothetical in the most scornful manner possible, because I don’t understand why someone would want to watch such a bizarre film, or why they should want to make it in the first place.

People blame TikTok, they blame YouTube, they blame iPad babies, they blame technology, but it isn’t video formats that impact people’s lack of skills — it’s the fact that their intellectual development is cut off at the knees, in primary and comprehensive schools, in universities, in life outside of school. In response to what people do not understand intuitively or immediately, robbed of these tools to let them understand it, they react negatively.

To teach children, then adults, how to understand and analyse things on their own terms is in itself an individual process — it takes that time, it’s complex, and this tutelage is increasingly impossible with large class sizes, underschooled and understaffed teachers, and a lacking syllabus for teaching these skills in the first place.

How can someone understand their own inability in this area? How is someone to come to terms with this, to become comfortable with the idea they might not understand things, or that they might read them wrongly, when to be “wrong” is bad, and scary?

After all, the underlying reason for the defunding and reallocation of resources from the above humanities I mentioned, on paper, is that these things take more time to examine, test, and score. To the anti-intellectual, STEM subjects have right and wrong answers: humanities don’t.

If things don’t have right and wrong answers, if the answers are in shades of grey, how can they be trusted? What is the value in degrees or nuance when nuance is so costly — when it takes time, effort, money? How can I automatically dismiss anyone who is “wrong” so that I can be “right” — so that I can win? Because if I win, I get to stop thinking about this?

When that’s the reward, it’s more than winning, isn’t it? “Winning” this sort of thing isn’t just about one’s feeling of superiority — it’s ultimately about feeling safe, secure, and unchallenged.

This is the core foundation of many anti-intellectual movements and perspectives — ideas that challenge our core beliefs and ideas, the thoughts we hold as certain and most secure, can be frightening, destabilising, even.

People become frustrated with adages like “There are no wrong answers,” because of course there are wrong answers. How can anything be right, if nothing is wrong? If nothing is wrong intellectually, does that mean nothing is wrong morally? If nothing is wrong morally, then what separates good people from bad people? What keeps good people safe from bad people?

Here comes the crux of what this piece is about: “harmful content.”

Read more in An Injustice!

Also on my Patreon and my SubscribeStar.

[radfemsiren]

(pls don't post if anon doesn't work, I am unfortunately a crypto) Do we know why modern Islam has so many dangerous terrorist/extremist sects? Why/how/when did that happen? As you mentioned the golden age of Islam, this new age terrorism shit doesn't seem to match at all with what Muslims believed back during the golden age or earlier.

Religion is the opium of the masses, and people who rely on drugs don’t really do so if they are in a good state already.

The Islamic golden age was full of affluence, relative political stability, access to resources… so good education and new ideas were welcomed. Women had higher literacy rates than even the men in Western Europe, and expansions in various academic fields was exploding.

Meanwhile, looking at the black plague in Europe and you will see there was quite a few extremist sects with different ideas on how to defeat this disease, with the most infamous flogging themselves with whips in the street to “beat the devil” out of them.

Extremist religious lunatics flourish in times of war, poverty, violence, and anarchy. They are like a mold that grows on unsuspecting food if you don’t regularly maintain your kitchen. Now affluence alone doesn’t just prevent religious zealots, Saudi Arabia and other gulf states got their riches too quickly and couldn’t progress socially as fast as the oil money came in… but if it was a slower process? Things would be different.

There’s a really good documentary about this phenomenon that will completely change your perspective on different cultures. This anthropologist believed that human advancement had nothing to do with the people themselves, but their natural resources. One of the big tells was access to water, and large game. There is no scientific evidence of any race being significantly more intelligent than others, but if you follow the access to water, livestock, and fertile land… than you will always see human advancement. The end was heartbreaking, he was studying and testing tribes in this jungle (I forgot the location), and they all ranked for high IQs, but they were suffering to make it in their environment, where the meat was small animals and the land impossible to toil. One asked him Why, if they were just as smart as white men, then how come they have to live like this while white people lived in apartment buildings with AC and could buy food in grocery stores…. I’ll have to find that documentary, it really showed me how location and circumstance establish everything, and how humble we must be because of that fact.

Living in a clean, stable, affluent, and secular country is such a luxury so many people don’t have right now.

[minniiaa]

I'm back ;D

And even more down bad for bottom Law than before

Imagine Luffy and Law's first time together and Luffy never even considered holding back, meanwhile Law's trying to figure out when Luffy had the time to learn half of the shit he's doing or saying to Law. Luffy immediately notices how Law puts his face into the pillows/mattress so he just flips Law over, but then Law's biting his lip and Luffy can't tell if this is supposed to be a game or Law if just purposefully trying to annoy him.

Eventually, Luffy learns Law can't hold out forever and absolutely uses that against him. Telling Law he may as well give up, that he already knows Luffy will give him what he needs so he should do the same, taunting Law with the things he said last time: “But you were begging for more last time, are you already tired, Traffy?” “I remember you asking so nicely, did you forget your manners?”.

OH AND THE TEASING?? Horribly close but still too far away fingers tracing Law's skin like a well practiced pattern that Law KNOWS Luffy knows. Luffy doesn't give up though because for once, he’s patient, waiting until Law breaks and throws aside his pride for selfish pleasure.

Back to their first time together though, specifically the aftermath where Law's immediately back to shoving his face into pillows while Luffy cuddles him like he never heard a noise come out of Law. That definitely pisses Law off, Luffy acting like what they just did was nothing, what Luffy just TURNED HIM INTO was nothing (even though that's not how Luffy feels). And it takes a while for Law to realize that Luffy isn't doing it out of a lack of self awareness or sexual ignorance, once he does… man I dunno, I image Law having to keep himself from jumping Luffy to test his theory.

Lol, that's another thing I think about, Law sometimes turning sex into an experiment. This is long enough though and I ain't nearly as poetic or creative with my literacy as you, so I'll have you take it from here.

TLTR: I want Law fucked nasty stupid

-💫💀💫

HI ANON! welcome back glad to see you are still in bottom law hell (heaven) with me! You are plenty poetic and creative don't talk down on yourself like that! Your headcanon is CANON in my book.

Okay okay so hear me out. I started writing a little headcanon story to respond to this yesterday and somehow ended up getting REALLY carried away. Basically, I blacked out and woke up to find that I wrote an 11.5k-word story about Law and Luffy's first time with some of the themes you brought up (with canon plot?? Who am I?)

It is entirely too long to post as a tumblr reply so I threw it up on my ao3 for all to enjoy. Click below if you would like to see Law being fucked nasty stupid ;)

Thanks for the inspiration, you rock!! Please drop more horny asks and I will feed the masses! Bottom Law supremacy 4 lyfe!

[not-poignant]

Daily excerpt from today's editing, chapter 93 of Underline the Black:

‘They’re all omegas, aren’t they?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘How did they have someone like James? I didn’t know two omegas could do that.’ ‘It’s rare,’ Gary said. He stretched again and settled, his muscles looser under Efnisien’s fingers. The trust felt really fucking good. Efnisien wanted to do this again. ‘It’s very rare. But it happens. Just like two alphas can have an omega child.’ ‘And she can drive on her own. I know some omegas can drive, but who gave her permission?’ ‘No one,’ Gary said. ‘She has a birth certificate. She’s registered. It’s harder for omegas to do things like that on their own, but it’s possible. They have to go through longer paperwork processes, the tests are unfairly biased against them, but a driving licence is possible. Education is a lot harder. Most of the schools are beta-alpha schools only, and don’t permit any omegas at all. There are stories of omegas who have died for a beta-alpha level education through the use of suppressants.’ ‘Shit. So they can learn university level stuff? Like beta-alpha level?’ Efnisien said “they,” but he almost said “we.” In that moment, he wanted to know what kind of brain he was born with. He knew what the omega theory modules said, but he wanted to hear it from Gary. ‘Of course they can. There’s nothing wrong with their minds,’ Gary said. ‘All studies done in fair and accommodating circumstances show there’s no difference. The biggest issue is bigotry. Omegas are raised in families that don’t always care about their literacy, or getting them past year six or seven at school. That schooling is often done at home, and sometimes the omega isn’t being treated well, or is expected to work as a cleaner, or a cook, or more. So the studies that show omegas fail at university beta-alpha levels have never fully accounted for the biased background. The myth of omegas being unable to think intelligently past a certain level – so they’re more suited to serve their alphas – is because we’ve raised them to be that way.’

[beardedmrbean]

Nunya can you explain this Twitter meme? https://x.com/AmericanaEthos/status/1726098935662719272?s=20

Like, I black and went to predominantly black schools. And they couldn’t stfu about civil rights and slavery.

Like no poor, marginalized, or even working class American think our country is perfect. Is wrong to believe this leftists memes are very classist? Our textbook acknowledges the terrible ( that career politicians allowed minus their own evil shit) constantly.

Did these marxists sleep through history class? Like, American slavery is the only type of slavery talk about in school that I had a little mid fuck after getting online and learning about the Dahomey.

I legitimately don't know who the not Superman dude is, but I can guess given the context here.

I think you're probably right about them having slept through every US history class they ever took.

I learned "Trail of Tears" in elementary school, same with slavery, and a few other of the less than savory parts of US history then as the years wore on the lessons got more and more involved and graphic since watching "Roots" in 2nd grade is a good way to traumatize kids so you know they moved in a more age appropriate direction.

I feel like the majority of the people that do this kind of meme fall in to a few different categories.

Not American and ignorant of what is taught here beyond what they see on twitter (things like Texas/Florida won't be teaching about slavery) and they're trying for viral fame.

Slept through history and got lots of F's as a result.

Didn't sleep through history and have selective memory

Did well in history, but don't feel like the subject was given enough attention.

Which is a valid opinion but people need to realize that there's only so much time to teach these things because other things need to be taught as well. So be glad that unlike me you have easy access to all of the information in the world you could want and you can learn more on your own.

They teach the history warts and all, you're likely to hear about Rosa Parks, Emmet Till, Ruby Bridges, and the Tulsa race massacre.

Rosewood massacre, Ocoee massacre, various tests before you could vote

This one is pretty easy so far. (just saw a longer version, it gets complicated)

Louisiana one here on the other hand... You got this if you couldn't prove at least a 5th grade education. 5th grader that passes this should directly to MIT.

very few people regardless of race are gonna be doing well on this.

But ya if we're doing racial issues it's all taught, most all at least. How much time did you see get spent on the people that built the railroads, the majority of whom if it was going west to east were Chinese and east to west Irish and all of whom were treated as disposable.

The 'if you die I can hire another man, but I gotta buy another mule' attitude.

Fuck I'm in CA and we did not spend a whole lot of time on that one, mostly that it was dangerous work and lots of people died.

I think at this point the best response you could give someone that makes or posts a tweet like that would be

"your abject failure to learn as a student does not mean the information wasn't taught"

(If you feel like hurting your brain I'm gonna link a few of the "literacy" tests)

Mississippi (not terrible)

Louisiana (whole thing, good luck)

Alabama (starts out easy enough, didn't skim too far so might turn incredibly difficult)

If you do any of these let me know how you did please, these things are insane. _________________

Hope this wasn't too long winded, tried to keep it mostly brief

[tehloserprince]

the Gabriel hate in the fandom is so gross, thank u for defending him and also Azi

I honestly never realized how much I liked Gabriel until I saw how ridiculously some of the fandom here treats him. The Aziraphale hate surprised me, but I guess it shouldn't have (because something something media literacy is dead something something).

Anyway, you're welcome! They shouldn't need any defending. They're both great characters! If you're the same anon who sent the other asks, please don't let the silly people in this fandom bring you down. If they want to see things in black/white and project a bunch of negativity that has no basis in the source material, then that's on them. There are plenty of folks who appreciate the different characters and relationships without putting Crowley and Aziraphale on a pedestal, and you'll find a good community among them. You're right, Crowley and Aziraphale aren't infallible, and to view them as such really diminishes their overall character and development.

They aren't better than everyone else. Their relationship is not better than any other relationship. Other relationships do not exist solely as metaphors for their relationship. They have both done shitty things, even if they were simply complacent in them. They do not make every decision with the other person in mind; they are independent characters with their own motivations and beliefs. To view the entire story within the scope of a ship is to miss out on so much.

Gabriel is not a villain. Full stop. Neil is very deliberate with his storytelling. If Crowley and/or Aziraphale felt abused, angry, etc., we would have seen it reflected within the story. In fact, we did see it from both of them: Aziraphale expressed his doubt and misgivings after recalling the Job story. The turning point for him came when the demons were attacking the bookshop; he reaffirmed his desire to protect Gabriel and got ready for a fight. With Crowley, we saw his initial reluctance to protect Gabriel, with his ill feelings culminating in the scene where he told Jim to jump out the window. That was the turning point for Crowley, and too many people choose to ignore the impact of that scene because they want to project things that simply aren't there. I've said it numerous times, but Alpha Centauri has been Crowley's daydream - you don't suggest your daydream getaway to beings you fear or loathe. While the four of them didn't part ways as besties, they were amicable. Folks can be upset about it all they'd like, for whatever reasons they want to conjure up; it doesn't change what was portrayed in the actual media. Crowley and Aziraphale worked through it, and I wish those folks would, too.

I may start using Gabriel as a litmus test when I interact with other fans, ha ha. It's fine to dislike a character, don't get me wrong, but the deliberate hate dumped on specific characters like him is very telling. Regardless, it seems a useful red flag!

TLDR: they're good characters, Brent. Some people are just silly. Block with impunity! This site should be a fun space! Curate your own experience, and don't let anyone ruin that for you! 🧡

[outivv]

I never really believe genshin players would pass an IQ test until I saw a genshin stan commenting how Kaveh and Al-Haithem weren't POC men when compare to character like Xinyan, Candace, and Cyno.

Notice how they mention the characters with dark skin colors. And not their names.

The bar is low for their IQ.

Adding on to that lurkers would always like to see that wokjak meme about how fans were silent over Yasuke a Black samurai in Japan but complain over the whitewashing of Natlan.

And some of the Japanese responses I get over this Yasuke "debate" is that they wishes it was a Japanese protagonist. Yet if you watched the trailer you literally can play as Naoe a Japanese Shinobi. They literally forgot about her bc these dumb bitches were focus on the Black man in Japan.

At least when it comes to Ubisoft even though they took inspiration off historical events they still represented the culture properly. Even though it's a "fantasy" setting.

Holy shit no cause I saw THE SAME POST

How are you gonna be so… unintelligent to go “oh yeah Al haitham? Kaveh? White guy names.” Like no… no, you’re joking. Don’t even get me started on the “um! Dottore is from snezhnaya!” No he’s not. His name is Zandik, does that sound Russian? No. Like media literacy is dead with genshin fans sometimes, because… no, all the sumeru characters are not meant to be white. You look up the proper pronunciation of their names, and their origins and they’re OBVIOUSLY not white 😭 these people are gonna be saying the same shit witch natlan in a year, just watch.

The whole assassins creed thing, just… blows my mind too- cause I’ve liked assassins creed for years now, and like… isn’t… the point… to show diverse characters in diverse cultures with diverse narratives…? Like? Be so for real right now. Plus WASNT YASUKE A REAL FUCKING PERSON???? LIKE??? BAVAJAH???

That’s Ubisoft though, and Ubisoft has its issues- but like I find the same people complaining about the next assassins creed game are also mad about people giving hyv criticism for their lack of diversity. Jesus Christ too many fucking racists 😒

[petervintonjr]

"The majority of you blame the poor Negro for the humility inflicted upon you during that conflict, but he had nothing to do with it. It was your love of power and your supreme arrogance that brought it upon yourselves. You are too feeble to settle up with the government for that grudge. This hatred has been centered on the Negro and he is the innocent sufferer of your spleen."

Right from the start, Thomas Ezekiel Miller's life would be unusually complicated. Born in 1849 South Carolina, his mother was herself a half-Black, half-white daughter of one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence; and his father a white man who rejected his parental responsibilities and insisted his child instead be given up for adoption. Thomas was then raised by two Free Black parents, Richard and Mary Ferrebee Miller (who had themselves been freed in 1850). After the war he began his legal education in New York. While Thomas's unusually light complexion would have certainly permitted him to "pass" as white in New York (or indeed, in any northern state) but after receiving his degree in 1872 from Lincoln University, he instead chose to return to South Carolina, where he would determinedly live his adult life as Black.

1872 fell squarely in the middle of Radical Reconstruction, when the Northern military still firmly controlled the former Confederate state governments, and Miller, even while still pursuing his law degree, became the Commissioner of Beaufort County education, determined to get more Black teachers into the Charleston city schools. From there he was able to leverage into becoming elected to the state general assembly in 1874, 1876, and 1878. Over the course of these three terms he was at last admitted to the bar in 1875, and was named Republican state party chairman in 1884.

Miller's next goal was to run for Congress (S.C., 7th Dist.); he lost against Democrat William Elliott, but Miller successfully contested the election results when it was revealed that many Black voters in key localities had not been permitted to cast their ballots, and Miller was sworn into the 51st Congress on September 24, 1888. In 1890 he ran for re-election, again facing off against Elliott, but this time Elliott hung onto his victory, again challenging the election results as fraudulent. (Is this all beginning to sound just a little too familiar?) The S.C. state Supreme Court ultimately ruled in Elliott's favor on the basis of "inconsistent ballot sizes and colors." (Come on people, does history repeat itself that blatantly?) Miller pursued his appeal and made a stirring speech on the House floor in support of a proposed Federal bill that would oversee federal elections and protect voters from violence and intimidation. Unfortunately by the time the elections committee convened to confirm Elliott's victory, Miller had already lost in the next election primary to George W. Murray, thereby ending his sole term in Congress.

Miller returned to the state legislature for another term, eloquently pushing back against the growing sentiment that Blacks were contributing to the South's slow economic recovery, arguing instead that White southerners were in fact primarily responsible for the region's economic problems because they were motivated by bigotry and vengeance, in denying Blacks full citizenship rights. Miller also attended the state constitutional convention in 1895 along with fellow former congressman Robert Smalls (see Lesson #107 in this series) but to little avail; the convention ended with prohibitively high property ownership requirements, crippling poll taxes, and wildly skewed literacy tests being written into law and effectively ending Black enfranchisement in South Carolina.

Now out of public life, Miller's final years were committed to his law practice and also to the establishment and modernization of the Colored Normal, Industrial, Agricultural and Mechanical College of South Carolina (now the State College of South Carolina). He was named to its Board of Trustees and then served as its President until 1911. He and his wife Anna Hume moved to Powelton, Pennsylvania in 1921, but after Anna's death in 1936 Miller moved back to Charleston, where he stayed until his own death in 1938.

[whenweallvote]

#OTD in 1870: The 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified, granting Black men the right to vote — five years after the 13th amendment formally abolished slavery across the country.

The 15th Amendment states that “the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”

Although ratified in 1870, the promise of the 15th Amendment was not fully realized until almost 100 years later. Voter suppression was rampant for Black Americans through tactics like voter intimidation, poll taxes, and literacy tests. It wasn’t until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that the majority of Black people in the South were finally able to exercise their right to vote for the first time. It’s been over 150 years since the 15th Amendment was ratified, and Black Americans around the country are STILL fighting for equitable access to the ballot box. The fight for our vote continues.

[luulapants]

As a non-american, who really do appreciate you teaching and informing people about Political and other Important things, I feel like you are able and would be good at explaining one thing for me. How come you need to register to vote in the USA? Is there a historical reason for it? Where I'm from as long as you are 18 on Election Day, and you are a citizen, you will be able to vote. And you just show up with your ID and vote.

I tried googling but I really didn't get anywhere.

So the answer to this is a lot of historical precedent, which I'll supply later, followed by the bigger question:

Okay, but why do you still need to register to vote now?

And the answer to that, some will claim, is to combat "voter fraud" the idea that people will vote multiple times or that non-citizens will vote. In actuality, voter fraud is statistically insignificant. The real reason is that removing voter registration rules would significantly increase the number of voters, especially young, poor, and minority voters, which would threaten establishment power structures. This is a threat to conservative candidates in both parties, but especially to Republicans, which is why registration rules in Republican-dominated areas are stricter than in Democrat-dominated areas.

I will also add that there is one state where you do not register to vote: North Dakota. Ironically, though, this is also a means of voter suppression. Instead of a registry, citizens show an ID with a legal address. About 25% of Native Americans in the state do not have an address on their ID because of how addresses are set up on reservations.

On to the history:

So the first thing you need to understand about the US is that it was originally established not as a unified country but as a political alliance between 13 countries with an agreement that international and inter-state law would be handled by the federal (alliance) government but most other stuff would be handled individually by the states.

Electing a president of the federal government was, then, not about the people of the US collectively choosing the leader of the people. It was about the states choosing who would lead the federation of the states. That's part of why we still have the antiquated electoral college: each state is allowed to send a certain number of delegates who will cast their votes for the president, representing the interests of their state. Each state was allowed to determine on its own how it would go about doing that.

Massachusetts was the first state to implement voter registration, which probably had something to do with the fact that as much as half of Massachusetts's tax revenue came from its poll tax in its early statehood. Not allowing men to "register" to vote until they showed proof of payment ensured all taxes were collected. Poll taxes were a sum of money that citizens had to pay in order to vote. These came and went in popularity and implementation in various states and later became a means of voter suppression in Southern states and were finally outlawed in 1965.

Voter registration didn't really become commonplace until after the Civil War in the late 1800s. Before then, the rural nature of most communities meant that it was easy to keep track of who was allowed to vote. If nonwhite people or women weren't allowed to vote, the men running the ballots would identify them visually. If only land owners were allowed to vote, they probably knew who the landowners in town were. Communities were small, and people didn't travel much.

As industrialization kicked off and cities got bigger, there was increased concern about immigrant populations in the north, so voter registration became a way to keep noncitizens from voting. In the post-reconstruction Jim Crow south, voter registration, literacy tests, and a resurgence in poll taxes were means to prevent Black folks, mostly former slaves at that time, from voting.

Voter registration itself is not inherently bad. As with the North Dakota example, not having registration can also be a means of suppression. The real issue is that voter registration has been made unnecessarily difficult.

A little less than half of US states have automatic voter registration - that is, if you apply for a state ID or driver's license or interact with the state in any other way which gets you in the database of state residents, you're automatically registered to vote. However, not all of those states automatically re-register you if you change your address, which disadvantages renters and therefore lower-income voters. Some allow you to update your registration on election day after an address change (you get a provisional ballot pending confirmation of your new address).

Another way to go about it is allowing same-day registration. 17 states allow you to register at the polling station. As with updating, they get a provisional ballot which is effective pending confirmation of your address.

(And if you're noticing a trend of address confirmation... yes, for those who are unhoused or otherwise don't have a permanent address or proof of address, they often are not able to vote at all.)

However, any of these solutions require individual states to decide they want to make voting more accessible. The established power in a lot of states has a vested interest in reducing voting as much as possible.

[gray-dun]

Bro: "Hey you wanna play Helldivers 2 sometime?"

Me: "You mean litmus test for media literacy the game?"

Bro: "You play Black Templar. Get off your high horse."