Civil Rights

Civil Rights

Michael P. Fix

Civil Rights Defined

• Equal treatment of all citizens by the government.

• Guarantees that all citizens are able to participate as equals in the practice of democratic life.

Civil Rights & Civil Liberties• Civil Rights are government guarantees

of political equality.

• Civil Liberties protect individuals from governmental interference.

• Further, Civil Rights tend to apply to groups, whereas Civil Liberties are individual protections.

The Ideal of Equality

The Founders believed in

political equality. But,

for whom?

The Ideal of Equality

No equality in the Constitution.

The Ideal of Equality

Equality of Condition

The government takes direct action to reduce economic disparities between citizens

Equality of Opportunity

The government seeks to eliminate

some discriminatory barriers to education,

employment, and public

accommodation

Civil Rights in Historical Context

Women and African-Americans given few rights.

Civil Rights in Historical Context

Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857)

Civil Rights in Historical Context

From www.oneonta.edu (left) and www.costumes.org (right)

Civil War and Change?

Three constitutional amendments were aimed at providing protection for African Americans

• Thirteenth Amendment (1865)

• Fourteenth Amendment (1868)

• Fifteenth Amendment (1870)

Civil War and Change?

•Black Codes

•Denied blacks equality before the law and political rights, and imposed on them mandatory year-long labor contracts, coercive apprenticeship regulations, and criminal penalties for breach of contract.

The Civil War & Change?

• The effect of these Amendments were limited by a series of Supreme Court decisions.

• Civil Rights Cases (1883)• Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) – “Separate

but equal”

The Civil War & Change?

• Southern States also managed to circumvent the requirements of the 15th Amendment.• Poll Tax• Literacy Test (+ Grandfather Clause)• White Primaries• Terror and Intimidation (has this really

ended?)

The Civil War & Change?

• Freed slaves and their descendents had no accumulated or inherited assets

• Because of the visibility of their skin color, African Americans were easy to exclude from institutions dominated by whites

The Civil War & Change?Race-based slavery and the years of racial discrimination that followed laid the foundation for contemporary racial disparities in wealth, education, housing patterns and employment opportunities

The Ideal of EqualityThe drive for civil rights focused on

• Equal access to voting• Prohibition of certain forms of

“categorical discrimination”

Categorical discriminationExclusion, by reason of race, gender, or disability, from public education, employment, housing and

public accommodations

Sowing the Seeds of Change

• In 1944, the Supreme Court declared that race was a suspect classification that demanded strict scrutiny (Smith v. Allwright).

• Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954) – overturned “separate but equal” in public schools.

Southern Resistance

Many political leaders in the South resisted attempts at desegregation.

From www. Search.com

African Americans and Civil Rights

•1963 March on Washington

•250,000 participants

•1964 Civil Rights Act passed

•1965 Voting Rights Act enacted

MLK – I Have A Dream

African-Americans and Civil RightsDe Jure

Segregation

Segregation and discrimination

mandated by state and local laws

De Facto Segregation

Segregation and discrimination

enforced through informal and semi-formal norms and

practices

Affirmative Action

Affirmative Action

Remedial preferences provided to people in university admissions, employment, and

government contracts

Affirmative Action is called reverse discrimination by opponents

Affirmative Action in the Higher Education

•How does affirmative action in universities differ from other preferential criteria in admissions?

•University of California v. Bakke (1978) was one of the earliest challenges to affirmative action in the university

Affirmative Action in Higher Education

•Diversity and Affirmative Action

•Diversity as a Constitutional Question

•Race-Neutral Approaches to Diversity

Protest over Florida Governor Jeb Bush’s effort to ban racial preferences in university

admissions and state contracting

Affirmative Action

49 percent of white respondents think that

affirmative action has gone too far, while 79 percent of minority respondents think

that it is still needed.

What are some of the consequences that these polarized

views can result in?

Affirmative Racial Gerrymandering

Following the 1990 census, the

Department of Justice pressed

southern legislatures to draw as many

districts as possible in which minorities would constitute a

majority of the electorate

Affirmative Racial Gerrymandering in North Carolina

Women and Civil Rights

Women’s rights groups attempted to use the Civil War Amendments

to expand their rights.

Women and Civil Rights

The Supreme Court’s 1873 Bradwell v. Illinois decision upheld a statute prohibiting women from becoming licensed attorneys in Illinois

The natural and proper timidity and delicacy which belongs to the female sex evidently unfits it for many of the occupations of civil life. The constitution of the family organization, which is founded in the divine ordinance, as well as in the nature of things, indicates the domestic sphere as that which properly belongs to the domain and functions of womanhood.

-Justice Joseph P. Bradley

Women and Civil Rights•15th Amendment did not bar denial of the vote on the grounds of gender

•Women had to fight for universal suffrage

Women and Civil Rights

[1] The right of citizens in the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

[2] Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation

The Nineteenth Amendment

Women and Civil Rights

In the latter half of the Twentieth Century Women’s Rights Groups

made significant gains in many areas . . .

*Discrimination*Abortion

Strict vs. Intermediate ScrutinyCases alleging

discrimination by race or national origin

Cases alleging gender discrimination

Strict Scrutiny

The government must show a compelling justification for

any laws, policies, or practices that result in racial

discrimination

Intermediate Scrutiny

The government need only show a substantial

justification, rather than a compelling reason, to explain the differential treatment of

men and women

Contemporary Civil Rights Issues

Many other groups have fought for civil rights over the last 30 years: people with disabilities, homosexuals, and Native Americans

Contemporary Civil Rights Issues

• The elderly and disabled • Americans with Disabilities Act (1990).

• Gays and Lesbians• Bowers v. Hardwick (1986).• Commonwealth v. Wasson (KY, 1992).• Lawrence v. Texas (2003).• Gay marriage and same-sex unions (VT, MA).