Institutionalized racial inequity is unjust. People from minority races in this country have been treated in brutally unjust ways personally and have been oppressed as groups by the system. This is a regrettable fact. The fact that it is regretted by the justice system and by popular culture is an indication that the issue is historical and not current. Of course bigotry of all kinds persists but that is a human failing which is not an acceptable American principle or practice. Racism as a partisan tactic is currently practiced.
Some issues should be taken from the legislative forum and from the political arena. Some should never have been introduced at all. You can impose a system of treatment but you can't really legislate morality.
Historically the issue has gone back and forth among democrats and republicans. Republicans, in general, were oppositional to the Civil Rights movement in the 50s but not as a solid platform of the party that persisted. It was a Republican Congress which passed the first ever civil rights act. Every single Democrat in Congress voted against the 14th amendment. Republicans in Congress authored what was then, and what remains today, the most sweeping Civil Rights legislation ever enacted. The 1875 Civil Rights Act guaranteed the right of equal access to all citizens in all public accommodations -- whether or not owned or controlled by the government. Now that phrase, “public accommodations,” is very familiar to us today, because it was at the heart of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which became the focal point of the 1960s civil rights movement. The reason that this question was before the Congress again in the 1960s is that the 1875 Civil Rights Act only lasted for eight years before the Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional. What finally became law in 1964, therefore, was the original Republican legislation of 90 years earlier. Not surprisingly, in 1964 a significantly higher percentage of Republicans than Democrats voted for the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Currently there is a lot of race pandering in politics and affirmative action has become a patronizing class system of questionable application, sometimes resulting in maladaptive behavior. At this point the finger points in both directions with some validity from each point of view. Racism is alive and well in politics and Dems are as guilty of seeding that for partisan benefit as Repubs are guilty of denying it. |
