Civil Rights. What are civil rights? Civil Liberties: –Constitutional protections from government...

Civil Rights

What are civil rights?

• Civil Liberties:– Constitutional protections from government

power. Liberty is protected when government does nothing.

• Civil Rights: – Guarantees to equal treatment under the laws

that government must secure on behalf of its citizens. Government is obligated to act.

Tyranny of the Majority

• When a majority is included in a faction, the form of popular government...enables it to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest both the public good and the rights of other citizens…we well know that neither moral nor religious motives can be relied on as an adequate control.

The Large Republic solution?

• [In a Republic,] it may well happen that the public voice, pronounced by the representatives of the people, will be more consonant to the public good than if pronounced by the people themselves, convened for the purpose…

• Extend the sphere, and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens; or if such a common motive exists, it will be more difficult for all who feel it to discover their own strength, and to act in unison with each other.

Why did this solution fail African Americans?

White tyranny

• Slavery– 13th, 14th, 15th amendments

• Plessy v. Ferguson

Jim Crow Laws

• Disenfranchisement– White primary.– Poll tax.– Literacy test.– Grandfather clauses provided to protect poor and

illiterate whites.

• Segregated public accommodations• Segregated transportation• Segregated education• Restrictive covenants

Letter from the Birmingham Jail

• What is King’s argument?

• Do you agree?

• Are there limits to his argument?

Questions

• Examples of Social Movements

Questions

• Examples of Social Movements

• Characteristics of Social Movements

Characteristics

• No specific size

• No membership criteria

• No formal structure

• Not hierarchically organized

Questions

• Examples of Social Movements

• Characteristics of Social Movements

• Why do people join them?

Why do people join them?

• Personal advantage

• Principled commitment

• Group solidarity

• Desire to be part of a group

Questions

• Examples of Social Movements

• Characteristics of Social Movements

• Why do people join them?

• How do they try to get what they want?

Tactics

• Emphasis on outsider strategies (but not exclusively)

• Refer to a cultural repertoire of “routines of collective action”

Questions

• Examples of Social Movements

• Characteristics of Social Movements

• Why do people join them?

• How do they try to get what they want?

• What gives rise to them?

What gives rise to a social movement?

• Unaddressed oppression/grievances

• Movement entrepreneurs

• Changes in political opportunity structure

Questions

• Examples of Social Movements

• Characteristics of Social Movements

• Why do people join them?

• How do they try to get what they want?

• What gives rise to them?

• What keeps them going?

What keeps a social movement going?

• Cohesive social groups

• Keeping focus – But successful movements broaden

• Avoiding radicalization– But consensus movements generate radicals

Evolution of the Civil Rights Movement

• NAACP legal strategies– Smith v. Alright (1945) White primaries– Swett v. Painter (1950)– Brown v. Board of Education (1954)

• World War II

• Civil Rights Act of 1957

Evolution of the Civil Rights Movement

• Nonviolent resistance– 1955 Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott– 1960 Greensboro, NC and other lunch counter sit-ins– 1961 Freedom Rides on interstate buses– 1963 Birmingham, AL demonstrations – 1963 March on Washington

• Civil Rights Act of 1964: makes it illegal to discriminate in public accommodations, schools, and employment

• Voting Rights Act of 1965: outlaws literacy tests and discriminatory local and state voting laws; provides for federal registration of voters in low voting areas; requires pre-clearance of changes to state voting laws

Later developments

• Remedial action

• Affirmative action

See both sides:Current civil rights issues

• Should the police be able to pull someone over without any other reason than that they belong to a racial group that is popularly associated with crime?

• Should airport baggage screeners spend more time screening Arab or Arab-looking men than other people?

• Should gay partners’ property automatically go to the other when one partner dies? (Should communal property laws apply to gay couples?)

• Should states be able to pass laws requiring that all state business (including forms, etc.) be conducted in English?

• Should bosses be prosecuted under Civil Rights laws for propositioning their employees?