Rand Paul's outreach

An editorial in today's Herald-Leader:

Sen. Rand Paul should keep visiting traditionally black colleges and universities — not because he'll win many converts with his Republicans-freed-the-slaves spiel but because he might learn something.

He might start to understand, for example, that new voter ID laws, voter purges and other obstacles erected by Republican legislatures and secretaries of state are updated versions of the literacy tests and poll taxes that southern Democrats once used to suppress the black vote.

...If Paul really wants blacks to trust the GOP, however, he should work to make voting easier, not harder. He also should chide fellow Republicans whose voter-suppression tactics channel the ugliness of the segregated South.