Civil Rights Abuses Learning Outcomes By the end of this section, you will be able to: Analyze the ways in which majority groups have judged the perceived threats posed by minority groups. Describe the range of methods majority groups in the United States and around the world have used to oppress minority groups. Discuss the relationship between the relative power of majorities and minorities and the government’s level of responsiveness to their desires. Identify current and historical examples of systemic and temporary civil rights abuses in the United States and around the world. Those in the majority are able to influence the creation of public policy that affects both those in the majority and those in the minority. While majoritarian politics might seem democratic—the word democracy comes from the Greek demos and kratos , which translates to “the people rule”—world politics and history have shown how easily majoritarian politics can create hardship, discrimination, and a loss of civil rights for groups that lack the political, numerical, cultural, or religious influence of majority groups. LGBTQ+ Discrimination People who identify as LGBTQ+ experience discrimination and degradation from majorities who see them as not fitting into traditional conceptions of heterosexual gender roles. As discussed above, political culture can change, but despite historic achievements, many countries continue to deny LGBTQ+ couples the same rights afforded to heterosexual “straight” couples. For example, same-sex couples are not permitted to adopt children (or no law allows for this) in most countries. “Chart: Where Adoption Is Illegal for LGBT+ Couples,” Statista, March 8, 2018, https://www.statista.com/chart/13179/where-adoption-is-illegal-for-lgbt-couples/. The United States Supreme Court did not affirm the right of same-sex couples to adopt until 2017. Pavan v. Smith, 582 U.S. __ (2017), https://www.oyez.org/cases/2016/16-992. Most European countries have legalized same-sex adoption, but it is considered legal in few other countries around the world. In 2002, South Africa became the first country in Africa to allow same-sex couples to adopt, “Lesbians, Gays, Can Adopt Children,” News 24 , September 10, 2002, https://www.news24.com/News24/Lesbians-gays-can-adopt-children-20020910. but LGBTQ+ activists in the country still feel unsafe due to widespread discrimination. Kimon de Greef, “The Unfulfilled Promise of LGBTQ Rights in South Africa,” The Atlantic , July 2, 2019, https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/07/southafrica-lgbtq-rights/593050/. As of December 2019, only 32 countries, about 16 percent of all the countries in the world, allowed same-sex couples to adopt. (credit: ILGA; attribution: Copyright Rice University, OpenStax, under CC BY NC-SA 4.0 license) Voter Suppression One of the ways those in power can seek to remain in power is by controlling whose voices can be heard and counted in elections. The failure of federal and state governments to enforce voting rights protections in the United States provides another troubling example of majoritarianism . Despite the ratification of the 13th Amendment in 1865 and the 19th Amendment in 1920, many American states continued to limit suffrage on the basis of sex and race. Policy makers justified denying voting and other political rights to Black Americans and women on the grounds that their participation would diminish the overall quality of the electorate because women Marina Koren, “Why Men Thought Women Weren’t Made to Vote,” The Atlantic , July 11, 2019, https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/07/womens-suffrage-nineteenth-amendment-pseudoscience/593710/. and Black Americans Danyelle Solomon, Connor Maxwell, and Abril Castro, “Systematic Inequality and American Democracy,” Center for American Progress, August 7, 2019, https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/reports/2019/08/07/473003/systematic-inequality-american-democracy/. were not deemed qualified to engage in the political process. Though constitutional amendments protected the right to vote for Black Americans, John G. Stewart, “Why the Civil Rights Act of 1964 Really Mattered,” Washingtonian , June 4, 2014, https://www.washingtonian.com/2014/06/04/why-the-civil-rights-act-of-1964-really-mattered/. American states and their White-majority (often all-White) legislatures found ways to limit Black political participation including literacy tests, poll taxes, and White-only primaries. These efforts are referred to as Jim Crow laws. The Jim Crow era, a period during which laws perpetuating institutional racism and the denial of Black Americans’ constitutional rights were enforced across the southeastern United States, lasted from 1877 to about 1965. Voter suppression continues to be a major problem in the United States. The Voting Rights Alliance documents 61 forms of voter suppression that range from limits on early voting, stricter requirements for voter identification (including not allowing Native American tribal IDs), and fewer opportunities for same-day registration to polling site discrimination, gerrymandering, and employers not giving time off from work for voting. Barbara Arnwine, “61 Forms of Voter Suppression,” The Voting Rights Alliance, 2019, https://www.votingrightsalliance.org/forms-of-voter-suppression. Voter suppression in the United States today is not just one event, but a slow accrual of opposition to the Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965 and its many subsequent renewals in Congress. One of the provisions of the original VRA was that more than a dozen states that had low voter turnout in the 1964 election and that had historically limited voting access to minorities had to seek federal approval of any changes in their voting laws. Their track records were poor, and the state governments had not shown the ability to oversee their own elections in ways that aligned with the protections in the US Constitution. States had challenged these “pre-clearances” before, but for years the VRA remained resilient. Jeremy Amar-Dolan and Zachary Zemlin, “Shelby County v. Holder,” Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School, https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/cert/12-96. The VRA was reauthorized with overwhelming support from congresspersons across the political spectrum as recently as 2006, when even the staunchest conservatives in the Senate joined their colleagues in a unanimous vote. However, after the election of Barack Obama in 2010, several states started to push against the VRA by making voting much more difficult. Ari Berman writes in The Nation , “After the 2010 election, GOP officials approved laws in more than a dozen states to restrict the right to vote by requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote, shutting down voter registration drives, curtailing early voting, disenfranchising ex-felons and mandating government-issued photo IDs to cast a ballot—all of which disproportionately target communities of color.” Ari Berman, “Why Are Conservatives Trying to Destroy the Voting Rights Act?” The Nation , February 6, 2013, https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/why-are-conservatives-trying-destroy-voting-rights-act/. Supporters of the For the People Act to expand voters’ rights rally on the steps of the US Capitol Building in March 2021. (credit: “For the People Act rally in Washington - 2021-03-05” by Terri Sewell/Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain) Then, the Supreme Court ruled in Shelby County v. Holder (2013) that the historic provisions of the Voting Rights Act no longer applied 50 years after the civil rights movement and that Congress had overreached in 2006 when it reauthorized the VRA for 25 years. Many conservatives saw the decision as a win for states’ rights, while others saw it as a major step back on civil rights. Almost immediately, Republican-majority legislatures across the country passed laws to limit voters’ rights and access to the polls. Many of those who support stricter voting laws hold that they are necessary to prevent voter fraud. After the 2020 election, former President Donald Trump repeatedly insisted that the election had been rigged and that he was the actual winner. Adam Serwer, “If You Didn’t Vote for Trump, Your Vote Is Fraudulent,” The Atlantic , December 10, 2020, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/12/voter-fraud/617354/. Despite no confirmed evidence of voter fraud, his supporters participated in small armed protests around the country, culminating in the January 6 insurrection in Washington, DC. Many participants accused the federal and state governments of being complicit in a massive election cover-up. The Brennan Center investigated all reports of voter fraud in the United States and found comprehensively “that fraud is very rare, voter impersonation is virtually nonexistent, and many instances of alleged fraud are, in fact, mistakes by voters or administrators. The same is true for mail ballots , which are secure and essential to holding a safe election amid the coronavirus pandemic.” “The Myth of Voter Fraud,” Brennan Center for Justice, 2021, https://www.brennancenter.org/issues/ensure-every-american-can-vote/vote-suppression/myth-voter-fraud. Still, between January 1 and December 7, 2021, at least 19 states had passed 34 laws restricting voting access, and close to 450 bills with provisions to restrict voting access had been introduced in all but one of the 50 states. “Voting Laws Roundup: December 2021,” Brennan Center for Justice, last updated January 12, 2022, https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/voting-laws-roundup-december-2021. Ethnic and Religious Discrimination Participation and full inclusion in a society may take different forms. Sri Lanka’s constitution references the right of all its citizens to practice the religion of their choice, but the constitution does emphasize Buddhism as the majority religion. This creates a situation effectively enabling a religious majority to maintain its power through the constitution. According to Chapter 2 of its constitution, “The Republic of Sri Lanka shall give to Buddhism the foremost place and accordingly it shall be the duty of the State to protect and foster the Buddha Sasana.” Sri Lanka’s Constitution of 1978 with Amendments through 2015 (Getzville, NY: William S. Hein & Co.), https://www.constituteproject.org/constitution/Sri_Lanka_2015.pdf?lang=en. Every Sri Lankan president and prime minister has been Buddhist, despite the presence of strong and vocal Muslim and Hindu minorities. “Sri Lanka Says Buddhism Will Remain Paramount in New Charter,” Reuters , July 12, 2017, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-sri-lanka-politics/sri-lanka-says-buddhism-will-remain-paramount-in-new-charter-idUSKBN19X1TR. It is important to note here that religion and religious freedom, particularly in the American context, are civil liberties because they are protected by the Free Establishment Clause of the 1st Amendment . However, when a government policy favors one religious community over another or limits the collective religious freedom of an entire group, it becomes a civil rights issue too. The kingdom of Bhutan conducts a 300-question happiness survey every five years, Julie McCarthy, “The Birthplace of ‘Gross National Happiness’ Is Growing a Bit Cynical,” NPR , February 12, 2018, https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2018/02/12/584481047/the-birthplace-of-gross-national-happiness-is-growing-a-bit-cynical. and since 1972, the kingdom has emphasized Gross National Happiness as a priority for the country’s people. “Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness Index,” Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative, https://ophi.org.uk/policy/gross-national-happiness-index/. But Bhutan is not a happy place for minorities like the Lhotshampa , or “people of the south.” The government, representing the interests of the majority, has forced this community of Nepali-speaking, majority Hindu people to speak the national language, Dzongkha, and to wear the national dress. Laws passed in 1977 and 1985 denied the Lhotshampa citizenship. “II. Background,” in “We Don’t Want to Be Refugees Again”: HRW Briefing Paper for the Fourteenth Ministerial Joint Committee of Bhutan and Nepal (New York: Human Rights Watch, May 19, 2003), https://www.hrw.org/legacy/backgrounder/wrd/refugees/refugees.pdf. The large-scale civic and social exclusion of the Lhotshampa led to a refugee crisis in the 1990s as the Lhotshampa were expelled from Bhutan, becoming stateless refugees. Shyam K. Sriram, “Of Acculturative Stress and Integration Distress: The Resettlement Challenges of Bhutanese Refugees in Metro Atlanta,” South Asian Diaspora 12, no. 1 (2020): 93–108. Members of the Lhotshampa refugee community in Charlotte, North Carolina, gather to share their common culture. (credit: “Singing at home24” by Kevin Beaty/Flickr, CC BY 2.0) Civil Rights Abuses toward Native Americans The centuries-long denial of civil rights to the original Indigenous people in the United States is a prime example of how a government can act in the interests of protecting a majority while simultaneously failing to protect and violating the civil rights of a particular group. Even the term “Native American” is a blanket category that contains hundreds of tribes, many with their own distinct languages. Between 1776 and 1887, the United States federal government seized over 1.5 billion acres of Indigenous land, which covered over three-fourths of what is now called the continental United States. Rebecca Onion and Claudio Saunt, “Interactive Time-Lapse Map Shows How the US Took More Than 1.5 Billion Acres from Native Americans,” Slate (The Vault), June 17, 2014, http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/2014/06/17/interactive_map_loss_of_indian_land.html. The federal government has directly participated in civil rights abuses against Native Americans, frequently failing to honor the 374 treaties with various tribes and nations signed and ratified in the 18th and 19th centuries. “IDA Treaties Explorer,” The Indigenous Digital Archive, https://digitreaties.org/treaties/treaties/. Treaties are legally binding, and the government’s failure to honor the treaties constitutes a breach of the rule of law. Kevin Gover, “Nation to Nation: Treaties between the United States and American Indian Nations,” American Indian 15, no. 2 (Summer/Fall 2014), https://www.americanindianmagazine.org/story/nation-nation-treaties-between-united-states-and-american-indian-nations. This failure has resulted in lost income, dignity, and traditional ways of life for Indigenous peoples. The Invasion of America This video provides a time-lapse map of the US seizure of over 1.5 billion acres of land from Indigenous Americans. In 2020, the US Supreme Court ruled that much of eastern Oklahoma is tribal land of the Creek people and not under jurisdiction of the state government. Laura Wamsley, “Supreme Court Rules That About Half of Oklahoma Is Native American Land,” NPR , July 9, 2020, https://www.npr.org/2020/07/09/889562040/supreme-court-rules-that-about-half-of-oklahoma-is-indian-land. Many activists continue to fight for the return of sacred and tribal lands, including the Great Sioux Reservation, whose Black Hills are the site of Mount Rushmore, and the Southern Paiute, “whose territory once included the northern rim of the Grand Canyon.” Alleen Brown, “Half of Oklahoma Is ‘Indian Country.’ What If All Native Treaties Were Upheld?” The Intercept , July 17, 2020, https://theintercept.com/2020/07/17/mcgirt-v-oklahoma-indian-native-treaties/. Compounding the history of stolen land and broken treaties, generations of Indigenous American and Canadian culture and language were lost when the governments of the United States and Canada forcibly removed Indigenous children from their homes and sent them to “boarding schools” for religious and cultural indoctrination. From 1860 to 1978, the US federal government, working with Christian-based organizations and churches, placed thousands of children into approximately 357 schools around the country, where the children were often victims of physical and sexual abuse. Mary Annette Pember, “Death by Civilization,” The Atlantic , March 8, 2019, https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/03/traumatic-legacy-indian-boarding-schools/584293/. According to one report, 83 percent of all Indigenous school-age children in 1926 were in boarding schools. David W. Adams, Education for Extinction (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 1995), 27. A national movement among Native groups is working to record, teach, and preserve Indigenous languages after nearly 65 of their traditional languages have already been classified as extinct. Lillian Sparks, “Preserving Native Languages: No Time to Waste,” Administration for Native Americans, (US Department of Health and Human Services), https://www.acf.hhs.gov/ana/preserving-native-languages-article. For decades, Native American activists have also expressed horror and outrage over the disappearance, kidnapping, and trafficking of Indigenous women—one of many civil rights issues affecting Native Americans exponentially more than other groups. According to the organization Native Hope, the loss of land pushes Native Americans to live off reservations where they have little to no tribal support and exist at the margins of non-Indigenous society. Federal programs like the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs) do not account for all cases, creating huge discrepancies in the number of women reported missing versus actually missing. “Facts about Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women,” Native Hope, https://www.nativehope.org/en-us/understanding-the-issue-of-missing-and-murdered-indigenous-women. Statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that “from 1999 to 2019, homicide was the third-leading cause of death among American Indian and Alaska Native women and girls ages 12 to 30.” Devon Haynie, “How States Are Addressing Violence against Indigenous Women,” US News & World Report , November 1, 2021, https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/2021-11-01/how-states-are-addressing-the-missing-indigenous-women-crisis. Indigenous women receive unequal protection and representation in the media. Whereas the country is often obsessed with stories about true crime and missing White women, there has historically been less attention paid to missing and kidnapped women of color. Helen Rosner, “The Long American History of ‘Missing White Woman Syndrome,’” The New Yorker , October 8, 2021, https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/the-long-american-history-of-missing-white-woman-syndrome. Japanese American Internment On December 7, 1941, Japanese armed forces attacked the US naval base at Pearl Harbor in the US territory of Hawaii. President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked Congress to declare war the next day, and on December 8, 1941, the US entered World War II. Two months later, the president signed Executive Order 9066, which gave the Secretary of War the power to “prescribe military areas . . . from which any or all persons may be excluded, and with respect to which, the right of any person to enter, remain in, or leave shall be subject to whatever restrictions the Secretary of War or the appropriate Military Commander may impose in his discretion.” Exec. Order No. 9066, 7 Fed. Reg. 38 (Feb. 25, 1942). https://www.archives.gov/historical-docs/todays-doc/?dod-date=219. What transpired was the forced internment of Japanese Americans, one of the most profound and consequential episodes of civil rights infringement in US history. Japanese Americans arrive at Santa Anita Assembly Center in California in 1942 during the first phase of relocation and internment. (credit: “Arcadia, California. Evacuees of Japanese ancestry arriving at the Santa Anita Assembly center” by Clem Albers/Department of the Interior/National Archives, Public Domain) This executive order imposed curfews and resulted in the relocation of approximately 120,000 US citizens of Japanese descent to internment camps. The executive order did not mention any racial or ethnic category of individual. (“A Controversial Executive Order Leads to Internment Camps,” Constitution Daily, February 19, 2021, https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/a-controversial-order-leads-to-internment-camps.). The largest share of those subjected to Executive Order 9066 were Japanese Americans, although individuals of German and Italian descent were also affected. In signing this order, President Roosevelt codified the widespread loss of civil rights for Japanese Americans. Under the implementation of the executive order, Americans of Japanese descent were determined to be those who had at least one parent or grandparent who was Japanese. Most of the relocation centers were located in California and other West Coast states because that is where the majority of Japanese Americans lived. Approximately 127,000 individuals—of which about two-thirds, or 84,000, were natural-born US citizens, most of whom had never been to Japan—were placed into relocation camps. Because the Asian Exclusion Act of 1924 forbade Japanese immigrants from securing citizenship, about one-third of those relocated were resident aliens. War Relocation Authority, Japanese-Americans in Relocation Centers, March 1943 , The War Relocation Authority & the Incarceration of Japanese-Americans During World War II Collection, Harry S. Truman Library and Museum, https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/library/research-files/report-japanese-americans-relocation-centers-march-1943-papers-philleo-nash?documentid=NA&pagenumber=1. The US Supreme Court reinforced the motives behind President Roosevelt’s executive order. Individuals living in the United States, whether or not they were citizens and whether they were born in Japan or in the United States, were presumed to be loyal to Japan during World War II. Their loyalties to the United States were questioned because of their ancestry. The Court heard two cases focusing on the constitutionality of Executive Order 9066. In the earlier case, Hirabayashi v. United States (1943), Hirabayashi v. United States, 320 U.S. 81 (1943), https://www.oyez.org/cases/1940-1955/320us81. the Court ruled in a unanimous decision that a curfew requiring US citizens of Japanese descent to be in their homes between 8 p.m. and 6 a.m. (which affected their ability to work, among other concerns) did not violate the 5th Amendment’s Due Process clause. In the later case, Korematsu v. United States (1944), the Supreme Court ruled in a 6–3 decision that Fred Korematsu’s arrest for violating an exclusion order did not violate his due process rights. As the Court noted in its majority opinion: “... all legal restrictions which curtail the civil rights of a single racial group are immediately suspect. That is not to say that all such restrictions are unconstitutional. It is to say that courts must subject them to the most rigid scrutiny. Pressing public necessity may sometimes justify the existence of such restrictions; racial antagonism never can.” Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214 (1944). https://www.oyez.org/cases/1940-1955/323us214. The US Supreme Court’s interpretation of the 5th Amendment Due Process clause in the Hirabayashi and Korematsu cases contributed to institutionalized discrimination against US citizens based on membership in an ethnic group. In accepting the executive branch’s implementation of Executive Order 9066, the Court determined that civil rights could be denied to US citizens based on the executive branch’s definition of membership in a specified ethnic group. Eighty years later, we continue to reflect on the indignities of internment, on how the president of the United States ordered this violation of the rights of thousands of Americans based on the perceived threat that some in power believed those Americans represented merely by virtue of their race, and on how the Supreme Court affirmed his actions. The injustice of internment illustrates a failure of checks and balances and of the separation of powers, which normally form the bedrock of American political culture, in the face of an acute and irrational fear of fellow human beings. George Takei’s 2014 TED Talk: “Why I Love a Country that Once Betrayed Me” Actor George Takei talks about his childhood experience as a Japanese American during Japanese internment in World War II. Slavery When the subject of slavery comes up in the United States, it is almost always in the context of what happened in the 19th century or in relation to President Lincoln. What many people do not realize is how pervasive slavery continues to be around the world. The International Labour Organization estimated that in 2016, 40.3 million people globally were bound in modern slavery, including 15.4 million in forced marriages. “Forced Labour, Modern Slavery, and Human Trafficking,” International Labor Organization, https://www.ilo.org/global/topics/forced-labour/lang—en/index.htm. According to Kevin Bales, professor of contemporary slavery at the University of Nottingham, the major components of slavery include “violence or its threat, loss of control over one’s life, obligation to another, lack of free movement and lack of payment.” As cited by Andrea Nicholson, Minh Dang, and Zoe Trodd, “A Full Freedom: Contemporary Survivors’ Definitions of Slavery,” Human Rights Law Review 18, no. 4 (2018): 689–704. Modern slavery takes many forms, including sex trafficking of adults and children, forced labor, domestic servitude, forced child labor, and the recruitment of child soldiers. “What Is Modern Slavery?” US Department of State, https://www.state.gov/what-is-modern-slavery/. According to the Global Slavery Index, while forced labor and slavery are often part of the production and manufacture of goods, the responsibility to eradicate slavery falls on governments, businesses, and consumers. Their reporting indicates that only seven countries have taken a stance on fighting slavery among labor practices: the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy, Germany, France, China, and Brazil. Global Slavery Index, 2018, https://www.globalslaveryindex.org/. The challenge of fighting slavery is compounded by the fact that slavery is still not illegal, as per constitutions or laws, in many countries, including Canada and Sweden. Katarina Schwarz and Jean Allain, “Slavery Is Not a Crime in Almost Half the Countries of the World—New Research,” The Conversation , February 13, 2020, https://theconversation.com/slavery-is-not-a-crime-in-almost-half-the-countries-of-the-world-new-research-115596. For their work in drawing global attention to the sexual enslavement of women and the use of rape as a weapon of war, human rights activists Nadia Murad Nadia’s Initiative, https://www.nadiasinitiative.org/. and Dr. Denis Mukwege “Sexual Violence as a Weapon of War,” Dr. Denise Mukwege Foundation, https://www.mukwegefoundation.org/the-problem/rape-as-a-weapon-of-war/. were jointly awarded the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize. Both Murad and Mukwege waged very public and decisive battles to raise awareness for the civil rights abuses felt especially by women, whose bodies are often violated during battle and war. The Prize was a recognition of their work from outside the government to persuade governments to enact change and protect the civil rights and dignity of women. In her Nobel Prize speech, Murad, a member of the minority Iraqi Yazidi community, spoke of a global recognition of human rights: We celebrate these days the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which aims at preventing genocides and calls for the prosecution of their perpetrators. My community has been subjected to genocide for more than four years. The international community did nothing to deter it nor to stop it. It did not bring the perpetrators to justice. Other vulnerable communities have been subjected to ethnic cleansing, racism and identity change in plain sight of the international community. Nobel Peace Prize winners Nadia Murad (left) and Dr. Denis Mukwege (right) are joined by Austrian Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl (center). (credit: “Außenministerin Karin Kneissl trifft Friedensnobelpreisträger/in Denis Mukwege und Nadia Murad” by Bundesministeriums für europäische und internationale Angelegenheiten/Flickr, CC BY 2.0.) In subjugating women, children, or specific racial or ethnic groups, slavery maintains the power of some groups at the expense of others. Thus, slavery is not just a denial of civil liberties; its abuse and denial of equal treatment represent extreme civil rights violations. The same powerful groups that practice slavery often control the political institutions that should be preventing it, enabling the abuse and subjugation of entire segments of society. The United States’ experience with slavery and related racial discrimination demonstrates how majority and minority status are determined and how those determinations affect who holds power. At the time of the writing of the Declaration of Independence, enslaved people from Africa comprised a large share of the population of what would soon become the United States. Of the 56 signatories of the US Declaration of Independence, it is estimated that as many as 41, including Thomas Jefferson , Benjamin Franklin , and John Hancock , as well as most signatories from the South, were slaveholders. Colman Andrews, “These Are the 56 People Who Signed the Declaration of Independence,” USA Today , July 4, 2019, https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/07/03/july-4th-the-56-people-who-signed-the-declaration-of-independence/39636971/. These same persons who claimed that the government had a responsibility to guarantee “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” supported slavery as an institution. Upon declaring their independence, the founders set to work creating a government. The government they created concentrated power at the state level. The Articles of Confederation , the first constitution, allowed slavery to flourish in the southern states because each state held so much power to shape its own affairs. However, it was the Three-Fifths Compromise contained in the second US Constitution that codified how the White American majority saw Black bodies—as objects that counted toward population, but not as people with their own rights. This preserved the power of the majority and oppressed those designated as a minority. According to Article I, Section 2: "Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons." This constitutional provision differentiated between “free persons” and “all other persons” (enslaved people). Each enslaved person counted as three-fifths of a person for representation purposes, although their enslaved status meant they did not have civil rights, including the right to select those representatives. Though the language of the Three-Fifths Compromise remains in the Constitution, Richard Albert, “Time to Update the Language of the Constitution,” The Hill , June 30, 2020, https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/505071-time-to-update-the-language-of-the-constitution. the ratification of the 13th Amendment in 1865 nullified slavery and the idea of representation of enslaved people. Less discussed is how the ambiguous language of the 13th Amendment may have ended slavery but laid the groundwork for the mass incarceration of African Americans. Students should watch Ana DuVernay’s 2016 documentary 13th to understand this issue. Like other major civil rights changes, the nullification of slavery in the United States came only after prolonged and intense struggle and, in the case of slavery, civil war. Changes in a country’s constitution in the form of constitutional amendments correspond with changes in political culture, and changes in political culture can be slow to evolve. Though the 13th Amendment removed its constitutional force, the legacy of the Three-Fifths Compromise goes on. The system it instituted affects the way Americans perceive and receive representation in Congress depending on where they live, Paul Finkelman, “Three-Fifths Clause: Why Its Taint Persists,” The Root , February 26, 2013, https://www.theroot.com/three-fifths-clause-why-its-taint-persists-1790895387. and the US Census still counts “persons” and not citizens. Derek Litvak, “The Census and Slavery: Why We Count People, Not Citizens,” Chicago Sun Times , July 1, 2019, https://chicago.suntimes.com/2019/7/1/20678047/census-three-fifths-compromise-slavery-racism-trump. Majorities have historically abused the civil rights of numerous minority groups, including LGBTQ+ persons, persons with disabilities, people of color, women, and religious and ethnic minorities, among others. Civil rights abuses have taken many forms including denial of equal protection to specific groups and the creation of laws or constitutional provisions to protect certain groups in the majority while simultaneously denying rights to political minorities. Most countries do not allow LGBTQ+ persons to adopt. The United States has limited voting access for millions of Black people despite the presence of legal and constitutional provisions that allegedly do not restrict suffrage. Native Americans have been denied due process and equal protection for over 200 years. They have suffered the loss of much of their tribal land and the forced removal of children into government-run indoctrination schools. During World War II, the US government forcibly relocated over 100,000 Japanese Americans along the West Coast into detention camps between 1942 and 1945. 13th Amendment the first new amendment to the US Constitution after the Civil War; made slavery and involuntary servitude unconstitutional democracy a system of government where power is derived from the political participation of citizens and/or residents Korematsu v. United States a landmark Supreme Court decision that supported the wartime relocation and incarceration of Japanese Americans despite many being American citizens by birth LGBTQ+ an acronym for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning, and other identities (including intersex and asexual) Three-Fifths Compromise a component of the original United States Constitution that allowed enslaved people to count toward political representation according to the formula that one slave was equal to three-fifths of a free White person

Social Sciences


Civil Rights Movements Learning Outcomes By the end of this section, you will be able to: Discuss the methods marginalized groups use to fight for civil rights protections. Compare current and historical examples of civil rights movements in the United States and around the world. Analyze the ways in which marginalized groups have sought to gain and mobilize allies among more powerful segments of society. Compared to other types of governments, democracies are fundamentally distinct in how they allow citizens to take an active role. Forms of political participation include boycotts, communicating with legislators, displaying signs, donating to candidates and campaigns, voting, running for office, volunteering in civic organizations, and participating in rallies and protests. (For more on political participation, see Chapter 5: Political Participation and Public Opinion and Chapter 8: Interest Groups, Political Parties, and Elections .) Historically, citizens (and noncitizens in some situations) have used various forms of participation to raise awareness of problems in the hopes of influencing elected officials to seek public policy solutions to these problems in the form of statutes and laws. Civil rights groups and social movements have emerged in response to conditions or events in which minority group members were targeted and subjected to discrimination and violence because of their minority group membership. Some of the most significant civil rights victories globally started from humble beginnings but turned into movements that galvanized millions. How Personal Responsibility Shapes Civil Rights A Protestor Confronts a Line of Chinese Armored Tanks in Tiananmen Square, June 5, 1989 In this video clip, a lone protester confronts a line of advancing tanks in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China, on June 5, 1989. As you read through this chapter, you may be struck by how many of the events that have brought change started with the action of one or two individuals. What would have happened if these individuals had not drawn attention to what they saw as the unethical, immoral, or unequal treatment of certain groups? Whether explicitly or subconsciously, these individuals realized it was up to them to take personal responsibility. They understood that they had to try to make a difference through some form of action, using whatever means they had, and that the action they were going to take was an ethical response to what they viewed as an unjust situation. Many people see things around them that they disagree with or that they feel are wrong. However, they may not believe that they as individuals can make a difference, or they are unsure what actions they as individuals can take that would make a difference. Whenever you find yourself in a situation where you believe something wrong is occurring—at work, in school, or as a part of an extracurricular organization—remember that the actions of individuals can make a difference. From Individual to Group Action In 1848, Henry David Thoreau wrote an essay titled Civil Disobedience inspired by his public refusal to pay a poll tax, which landed him in jail. Liberal political philosopher John Rawls defines civil disobedience as a “public, nonviolent, conscientious yet political act contrary to law usually done with the aim of bringing about a change in the law or policies of the government.” Candice Delmas and Kimberley Brownlee, “Civil Disobedience,” in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , ed. Edward N. Zalta, revised June 2, 2021, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/civil-disobedience/; John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971), 320. Civil Disobedience English actor Stephen Fry narrates this explanation and brief history of civil disobedience. Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience influenced the political attitudes and subsequent activism of M. K. “Mahatma” Gandhi, G. Hendrick, “The Influence of Thoreau’s ‘Civil Disobedience’ on Gandhi’s Satyagraha,” New England Quarterly (1956): 462–471. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Brent Powell, “Henry David Thoreau, Martin Luther King Jr., and the American Tradition of Protest,” OAH Magazine of History 9, no. 2 (1995): 26–29. and other writers and reactionaries like Emma Goldman, Upton Sinclair, Leo Tolstoy, and Marcel Proust. Bob Pepperman Taylor, The Routledge Guidebook to Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience (New York: Routledge, 2014). In May 2016, more than 3,500 European climate activists shut down the open-cast coal mine Welzow-Süd in Germany and cut Europe’s tenth-largest emitter of CO 2 , the Schwarze Pumpe power plant, off from all coal supplies. In this act of civil disobedience, protesters entered the mine and blocked coal transport. (credit: “Ende Gelände: Day 1 - More than 3,500 people joined the action of civil disobedience” by Tim Wagner/Break Free/Flickr, CC BY 2.0) In 1892, Homer Plessy engaged in an act of civil disobedience when he challenged the discriminatory Louisiana Railway Accommodations Act (1890), which required all Louisiana passenger trains to provide “equal but separate accommodations for the white and colored races.” “The Louisiana Railway Accommodations Act,” Acts of 1890, No. 111, https://railroads.unl.edu/documents/view_document.php?id=rail.gen.0060. The act required railway staff to deny accommodation to those refusing to abide by the law. Plessy, who was one-eighth Black and “passed” as a White man, sat in the train car reserved for White passengers and announced to the conductor that he was Black. Though Plessy acted alone, he was part of an organization that called itself Comité des Citoyens (Committee of Citizens) , and he agreed to protest the law on their behalf. Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896), https://www.oyez.org/cases/1850-1900/163us537 After his actions resulted in his arrest, he had standing to challenge the law, and his case went before the US Supreme Court. The Court’s opinion in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) reinforced the doctrine of “ separate but equal ,” which gave constitutional protection to race-based discrimination and supported the attitudes of the majority of Americans and elected officials at the time. This made it legal and constitutional for states to determine who was White and who was non-White and to decide whether and when White people and non-White people would be separated in public accommodations. It freed private businesses and institutions to practice race-based segregation without government interference. According to the Legal Information Institute , “The decision . . . was the first major inquiry in to the meaning of the equal-protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which prohibits the states from denying “equal protection of the laws” to any person within their jurisdiction . . . Justice Brown stated that even though the Fourteenth Amendment intended to establish absolute equality for the races, separate treatment did not imply the inferiority of African Americans.” Krystyna Blokhina Gilkis, “Separate But Equal. I: Plessy v. Ferguson ,” Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School, last updated January 2022, https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/separate_but_equal. In the years following the Plessy decision, activist efforts grew to work for civil rights for African Americans. In 1909, Black leaders including W. E. B. DuBois and Ida B. Wells joined White advocates to form the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) . Organized actions gained traction with the work of groups like the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters , a Black labor union founded in 1925, and later in the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), a group that influenced and worked with civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. In the 1950s and 1960s, CORE pioneered the use of acts of civil disobedience like bus boycotts, marches, and sit-ins as a central mechanism of the civil rights movement. In the 1960s, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) used nonviolent tactics to challenge segregation, register and mobilize Black voters, and seek equal protection and equal treatment for Black people and for women. Charlie Cobb, “The Story of SNCC,” https://snccdigital.org/inside-sncc/the-story-of-sncc/. In 1969, seventy years after Homer Plessy’s protest, Czech university student Jan Palach signed a suicide note with the fictional name “Torch Number 1” and set himself on fire to protest the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and the growing despondency among Czech youth. Andy Kopsa, “Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Revolution Started 30 Years Ago—But It Was Decades in the Making,” TIME , November 16, 2019, https://time.com/5730106/velvet-revolution-history/. His suicide inspired further suicides and eventually led to a populist uprising known as the Velvet Revolution , which, as the Soviet Union was dissolving, culminated in Czechoslovakia’s independence in 1989 and its dissolution into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993. Thousands gathered in Prague in 1989 as part of the Velvet Revolution. (credit: “1989 sametova revoluce 12” by Josef Šrámek ml./Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0) In 2010, Mohamed Bouazizi died by suicide to protest police corruption and lack of economic opportunities in Tunisia. Thessa Lageman, “Remembering Mohamed Bouazizi: The Man Who Sparked the Arab Spring,” Al Jazeera , December 17, 2020, https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2020/12/17/remembering-mohamed-bouazizi-his-death-triggered-the-arab. As word spread of Bouazizi’s suicide, thousands gathered across the country, united by what they saw as a death in response to government corruption. News, photos, and videos of the Tunisian protests were quickly shared with people in other Arab countries, and what started as a demonstration in Tunisia engulfed the Middle East. Within months, four government leaders would resign in Egypt, Libya, Yemen, and Tunisia, ushering in what many saw as the beginning of more populist and democratic ways of life. Erin Blakemore, “What Was the Arab Spring and How Did It Spread?” National Geographic , March 29, 2019, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/arab-spring-cause. This movement became known as the Arab Spring . Movements to Achieve African American Equality Most people associate the civil rights movement in the United States with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the 1963 March on Washington , but the movement first began with a 1953 bus boycott aimed at desegregating public transportation in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Aldon Morris, The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing for Change (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986). This protest occurred two years before the lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till for allegedly offending a White woman in a grocery store and the arrest of Rosa Parks that instigated the more famous Montgomery Bus Boycott , both of which occurred in 1955. Dr. Martin Luther King addressed a crowd of over 200,000 people gathered at the US Capitol during the August 28, 1963, March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. (credit: “Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site” by National Park Service/Flickr, CC BY 2.0) The civil rights movement was also characterized by a push-and-pull between the American presidency, Congress, and the US Supreme Court. Each had a major role to play, and because of checks and balances, they all influenced the work of the other. Their work culminated in the passage of two of the most significant laws in United States history, the Civil Rights Act (1964) and the Voting Rights Act (1965). Both came about during an era of great public involvement and protest over the lack of civil rights afforded to African Americans. Despite newspaper, radio, and television coverage of events including protest marches that were met with violent police response, there was still considerable resistance among members of Congress, representatives, and senators to passing these comprehensive bills. President Lyndon Johnson Remarks on the 1964 Civil Rights Act Upon signing the 1964 Civil Rights Act, President Lyndon Johnson addressed the nation on national television. Black Lives Matter (BLM), a decentralized, grassroots movement focused on fighting police brutality and racially motivated violence, represents, for many, a new civil rights movement. While earlier civil rights movements focused on equal access to opportunities and public accommodations, according to its website, the mission of Black Lives Matter “is to eradicate white supremacy and build local power to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes.” “About,” Black Lives Matter, https://blacklivesmatter.com/about/. The movement has primarily used social media to organize marches, protests, and boycotts and to communicate with elected officials. Gabe Granillo, “The Role of Social Media in Social Movements,” Portland Monthly , June 10, 2021, https://www.pdxmonthly.com/news-and-city-life/2020/06/the-role-of-social-media-in-social-movements; Shira Ovide, “How Social Media Has Changed Civil Rights Protests,” The New York Times , last updated December 17, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/18/technology/social-media-protests.html. In this way it is markedly different from the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, which was primarily inspired and organized by political institutions Morris, Origins of the Civil Rights Movement . like African American churches Allison Calhoun-Brown, “Upon This Rock: The Black Church, Nonviolence, and the Civil Rights Movement,” PS: Political Science and Politics 33, no. 2 (2000): 169–174. and by student/youth-heavy organizations like the Congress of Racial Equality , Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee , Julian Bond, “SNCC: What We Did,” SNCC Legacy Project, 2000, https://www.sncclegacyproject.org/we-were-sncc/what-we-did. and Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) . In its examination of the nature of systemic and institutional racism at the national, state, and local levels and on a global scale, Black Lives Matter represents to many the next stage in the effort to secure civil rights for Black people. Where past civil rights movements focused on the consequences of racism, BLM adds an examination of racism’s origins and the structural constructs like patriarchy, colorism, capitalism, and homophobia that create the conditions that allow for racist institutions. One of the biggest outcomes of BLM’s efforts has been the mainstreaming of the phrase “ structural racism .” As senior correspondent for TIME magazine Justin Worland notes, “once confined to academic and activist circles on the left of the spectrum, [the term structural racism] has become the phrase du jour.” Justin Worland, “America’s Long Overdue Awakening to Systemic Racism,” TIME , June 11, 2020, https://time.com/5851855/systemic-racism-america/. An estimated 15 to 26 million people in the United States participated in the summer 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, making them perhaps the largest social movement demonstration in United States history. Larry Buchanan, Quoctrung Bui, and Jugal K. Patel, “Black Lives Matter May Be the Largest Movement in US History,” The New York Times , July 3, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/03/us/george-floyd-protests-crowd-size.html. It is difficult to compare the 2020 protests with other social movements and marches in the United States because most events take place on one day. The 2020 summer rallies, protests, and marches drew more participants than the combined attendance at the 1982 anti-nuclear march in New York City, the 2017 Women’s March , and the February 2003 nationwide protest against the war in Iraq. Leanna Garfield and Zoe Ettinger, “14 of the Biggest Marches and Protests in American History,” Business Insider, last updated June 1, 2020, https://www.businessinsider.com/largest-marches-us-history-2017-1. Protestors march through Minneapolis on November 15th, 2015, to protest the death of Jamar Clark, a Black man who was shot by police while handcuffed in police custody. (credit: “Black Lives Matter protest march” by Fibonacci Blue/Flickr, CC BY 2.0) Me Too One of the most remarkable social movements of the 21st century has been Me Too , a global effort that encourages people to speak out about their experiences of sexual harassment and assault and to publicly name their attackers. American activist Tarana Burke originally coined the phrase in 2006 in response to working with children of color who were victims of molestation and childhood sexual abuse. Tarana Burke, “History & Inception,” Me Too, https://metoomvmt.org/get-to-know-us/history-inception/. As she heard story after story of the horrors Black girls experienced, Burke was reminded of her own experience of rape at the age of seven and the shame she subsequently felt. She came up with the expression “Me Too” as a form of solidarity with the victims, particularly girls of color. Tonya Mosley, “‘Me Too’ Founder Tarana Burke Says Black Girls’ Trauma Shouldn’t Be Ignored,” NPR, September 29, 2021, https://www.npr.org/2021/09/29/1041362145/me-too-founder-tarana-burke-says-black-girls-trauma-shouldnt-be-ignored. Ten years later, in 2017, the movement exploded, primarily through the Twitter hashtag #MeToo, building an online community of millions of people, mostly women, who push not only for recognition of the generational trauma of sexual harassment, but also for immediate civil rights change. Sophia Gilbert, “The Movement of #MeToo,” The Atlantic, October 16, 2017, https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/10/the-movement-of-metoo/542979/. A woman carries a #MeToo sign during a protest. (credit: “Can You Hear Me Now? #MeToo” by Alec Perkins/Flickr, CC BY 2.0) Me Too movements have sprung up around the world, uniting people across the globe and across generations. The movement has sparked public outrage over the past untouchability of celebrities and public figures accused of sexual harassment like Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein, Matt Lauer, Larry Nassar, Louis C.K., Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein, Prince Andrew, James Franco, Woody Allen, Bill Clinton, Al Franken, Kevin Spacey, and others whose cult of personality shielded them for years from criminal investigation or accountability. Gen Z has played a pivotal role in Me Too gaining momentum. As columnist David Bloom put it, “Youths are approaching power in new ways, wielding it collectively through social media and new vectors of influence . . . a self-organizing flash mob responding to a perceived problem or issue.” David Bloom, “How Gen Z and Millennials are Reshaping What Power Is, and What It Means for Brands,” Forbes , September 19, 2019, https://www.forbes.com/sites/dbloom/2019/09/12/how-gen-z-and-millennials-are-reshaping-what-power-is-and-what-it-means-for-brands/?sh=4e130b626d9f. According to Vox , because of the Me Too movement, there are now better formal procedures for victims of sexual assault to seek affordable legal representation, more workplace protections, and even new state laws to remove sexual harassment from nondisclosure agreements. Anna North, “7 Positive Changes That Have Come from the #MeToo Movement,” Vox , October 4, 2019, https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/10/4/20852639/me-too-movement-sexual-harassment-law-2019. In addition to working for this practical legal progress, Me Too activists strive to change fundamental perceptions of women. However, like other civil rights movements before it, Me Too has not had the same level of success everywhere, and there is still much work to be done. According to immigrant author and journalist Rituparna Chatterjee , “#MeToo stories are now a reminder of the feminist moment that our institutions sidestepped to avoid accountability. In India, women still have limited access to justice—unless their stories are used as trauma porn for the nation.” Rituparna Chatterjee, “Women Came Forward. Then a Chill Factor Set In,” The Washington Post , May 8, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/05/08/metoo-around-the-world/. Fundamentally, despite millions of men and women taking part in protests across the country, conceptions of women have not substantively changed in India in response to Me Too. The country has missed the moment, and even in countries that have made some progress, there is still work to do. Just as numerical majorities have power, large groups of people, including groups made up of minority individuals who have little power on their own, have achieved success when they came together to work for civil rights change. These groups have engaged in mass political participation in the form of civil disobedience, protest, marches, elections, and boycotts. Notable civil rights movements around the world include the American civil rights movement, the Velvet Revolution, the Arab Spring, Me Too, and Black Lives Matter. Arab Spring a series of citizen protests against the governments of Middle Eastern countries between 2010 and 2012 Black Lives Matter a civil rights movement founded in 2013 to create public awareness of and accountability for police misconduct in the deaths of Black people civil disobedience the nonviolent refusal to comply with a law or laws in protest of governmental policies Me Too a global civil rights movement publicizing endemic sexual harassment and sexual violence in order to raise awareness, empower those who have been affected, and instigate policy change Plessy v. Ferguson a landmark Supreme Court decision that denied equal access to African Americans and reinforced segregation between White people and Black people by allowing separate accommodations and access to housing, transportation, education, etc. political participation activities like voting, running for office, contributing to campaigns and parties, protesting, lobbying, attending political events, and other processes that allow residents and citizens of a country to be actively involved in their government separate but equal the idea, used to justify the segregation of Black people and White people in the United States from the late 19th century into the first half of the 20th century, that separate accommodations for individuals of different races can be equal; most often associated with Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) Velvet Revolution a 1989 nonviolent, primarily student-led civil rights movement in the former Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic and Slovakia) in response to communist rule

Social Sciences


How Do Governments Bring About Civil Rights Change? Learning Outcomes By the end of this section, you will be able to: Integrate an understanding of racism and discrimination into your knowledge of government institutions. Illustrate how legislative, executive, and judicial power can be used to bring about civil rights policy change. Differentiate between formal and informal executive power and control. Discuss ways in which governments have attempted to make amends for past civil rights abuses. The emergence of social movements demanding political change and the extension of civil rights may help minority groups secure those rights, but it is the work and responsibility of political institutions to fully address past discrimination. Institutional Racism and Intersectionality When examining civil rights issues around the world as they pertain to race and ethnicity, it becomes apparent that the way many formal political institutions and branches of government—judicial, executive, legislative, and bureaucratic—are composed and the laws they create and enforce establish and advance institutional racism . Institutional racism refers to the racist laws and practices that are deeply embedded in a country’s institutions and that, because they are so embedded, have established norms that may make their racist nature harder for those in the majority to recognize. Sam Richards, “Institutional Racism in the Criminal Justice System,” SOC 119, Penn State University, September 18, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UESzUBPoTRA. According to Vanderbilt University, “Institutional racism is racism perpetrated by social and political institutions that have the power to affect large groups of people that belong to a racial group. It shows up in both formal and informal ways and in the systematic distribution of resources, power, and opportunity in our society.” “Day 8: Addressing the Four Levels of Racism—Institutional Racism (within and between Institutions and Systems of Power),” Diversity Recruitment Vanderbilt University, https://www.vanderbilt.edu/work-at-vanderbilt/diversitytraining/day8.php. Another way to think about this is that political institutions are responsible for making resources available to everyone fairly, and when that does not happen, these institutions operate in a way that is inequitable. Similarly, when a government does not do enough to make sure everyone in a society, country, or community has the same opportunities to succeed, that government is operating in a way that is inequitable. It is important to mention here that discrimination takes different forms and that these types can intersect in a way that makes it impossible to separate. For example, Black women in the United States have historically faced discrimination on the basis of sex and discrimination on the basis of race, but the two cannot be separated. According to Columbia Law School professor Kimberlé Crenshaw , who developed the concept of intersectionality , Black women are the product of their intersecting identities, and one must acknowledge their intersectional identities before thinking about solutions to help this unique group of people. If you add sexuality, skin complexion, language, disability, and other identities, you realize that identity is complex and often cannot be captured by civil rights laws that seek to address injustices against one group of people such as women only, Black women only, Black people only, etc. What Is Intersectionality? In this clip, The Advocate’s Ashley Jiang explains the origins and applications of the idea of intersectionality. Government institutions and the politicians who represent them—like legislators, judges, and prime ministers—play a major role in balancing the needs of majority and minority groups to enforce the most equitable set of laws. The majority uses its power to decide whose rights are protected. As the next section illustrates, institutional racism can be embedded in a country’s constitutionalism and political culture. Powerful political actors make decisions based on who should receive rights (and who should be denied them), and in doing so they normalize discrimination and the violation of the rights of marginalized groups. Legislative and Judicial Action In representative democracies or republics, where the people have the power to choose officials to represent their needs and wants, legislatures represent the national mood and the dominant political culture of the participating public. Around the world, legislatures and legislators are key to creating and passing legislation that either enshrines the marginalization of certain groups and the violations of their rights or that protects those groups. However, it is often the judicial system, and in particular the highest national court in a country, that can have a remarkable and lasting effect on civil rights. These judges or justices usually have lifetime tenure, which gives them the power to affect the direction of civil rights law for decades. Equal access to judicial and legislative action is key to securing civil rights protections. According to World Justice Project researchers Sarah Chamness Long and Alejandro Ponce , 1.5 billion people around the world live in countries that have the appropriate political institutions, but they “cannot obtain justice for civil, administrative, or criminal justice problems.” Long and Ponce call this inability “ the justice gap .” Sarah Chamness Long and Alejandro Ponce, “Measuring the Justice Gap: A People-Centered Assessment of Unmet Justice Needs Around the World,” World Justice Project, 2019, https://worldjusticeproject.org/our-work/research-and-data/access-justice/measuring-justice-gap. This “justice gap” is apparent in India, where, despite the promise of equal justice laid out in the Indian constitution, people have often been denied access to justice and due process. Article 39A of the Indian constitution specifies: “The State shall secure that the operation of the legal system promotes justice, on a basis of equal opportunity, and shall, in particular, provide free legal aid, by suitable legislation or schemes or in any other way, to ensure that opportunities for securing justice are not denied to any citizen by reason of economic or other disabilities.” India’s Constitution of 1949 with Amendments through 2015 (Getzville, NY: William S. Hein & Co.), https://www.constituteproject.org/constitution/India_2015.pdf?lang=en. In response to what many judges and justices felt was an absence of avenues for the public to seek justice for social and political issues, in the 1980s the Supreme Court of India instituted a process known as public interest litigation (PIL) by which any citizen of India could seek redress for grievances in the courts. In other words, any citizen could ask a court to decide a political or legal issue without needing a legislative response; anyone can approach the Supreme Court of India directly without introducing a lawsuit in a court of original jurisdiction and then appealing the verdict. This is very different from the judicial system in the United States, where only a lawsuit introduced in a state or lower federal court can be appealed all the way to the US Supreme Court (for a more detailed discussion, see Chapter 11: Courts and Law ). Mohammed Haris Usmani, “Public Interest Litigation: Its Origin and Meaning,” Legal Service India, 2018, https://www.legalserviceindia.com/article/l273-Public-Interest-Litigation.html. PIL takes away the common-law idea of standing to sue. As attorney Zachary Holladay writes: PIL allows for any individual who claims a violation of one of their fundamental rights, as enshrined in the Constitution, to bypass the local courts and appeal directly to one of the state’s High Courts or to the Supreme Court. The preferred remedy is often in the form of equitable relief, such as an injunction, to compel the government to take appropriate measures to redress violations of fundamental rights. Zachary Holladay, “Public Interest Litigation in India as a Paradigm for Developing Nations,” Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 19, no. 2 (2012): 555–573, 557. Thus, PIL allows marginalized groups, who often lack resources or are otherwise silenced, to seek justice. Similarly, Sierra Leone has improvised legal traditions to meet the civil rights and judicial needs of its citizens. According to a 2006 report, at that time, in the country of five million people, there were only 100 trained lawyers. Vivek Maru, Between Law and Society: Paralegals and the Provision of Primary Justice Services in Sierra Leone (New York: Open Society Justice Initiative, 2006), https://www.justiceinitiative.org/uploads/f65afb31-a77c-4a06-ab08-b4277d404f52/between-law-and-society-20100310.pdf. As a point of comparison, there were 1,327,910 lawyers in the United States in 2021 (based on 2020 census numbers, that’s about one lawyer for every 250 people). American Bar Association, “Demographics: Growth of the Legal Profession,” in Profile of the Legal Profession 2021 (Chicago: American Bar Association, 2021), 10, https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/administrative/news/2021/0721/polp.pdf; “Quick Facts: United States,” US Bureau of the Census, https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045221. Two nonprofits in Sierra Leone started training paralegals around the country to assist with property, criminal, and public interest issues. Another African country, Malawi, has also experimented with training paralegals, and its program has now been replicated in Kenya, Uganda, and Benin. The Malawi “model” proved hugely successful in improving the civil rights of prisoners who did not have the means to secure good representation and in helping the accused know their rights. Maha Jweied and Miranda Jolicoeur, “Community-Based Paralegals in Africa,” in Expert Working Group Report: International Perspectives on Indigent Defense (Washington, DC: US Department of Justice), https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/236022.pdf. While the people in a democracy often look to their major political institutions for guidance in troubled times, those institutions can make mistakes, and the US Supreme Court’s judgment in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) was one of those mistakes. Described by some as one of the worst court decisions ever, Stuart Streichler, “The Worst Decision Ever?” Legal Times 30, no. 11 (2007), http://faculty.washington.edu/sstreich/documents/worstdecisionever.pdf; Sanford Levinson, “Is Dred Scott Really the Worst Opinion of All Time?” Harvard Law Review 125, no. 23 (2012), https://harvardlawreview.org/2012/01/is-dred-scott-really-the-worst-opinion-of-all-time-why-prigg-is-worse-than-dred-scott-but-is-likely-to-stay-out-of-the-aeoeanticanonae%C2%9D/. Scott affirmed that enslaved people were ineligible for citizenship and associated rights. It is important to note here that the framers never defined citizenship and only hinted at naturalization. Alexander M. Bickel, “Citizenship in the American Constitution,” Arizona Law Review 15 (1973): 369. This portrait of Dred Scott was published in Century magazine in 1887. (credit: “ Dred Scott. Harriet, wife of Dred Scott ” by Century Company/Library of Congress) Dred Scott was born into slavery. His enslavers moved him from Virginia to Alabama to Missouri and then to the free state of Illinois and the free territory of Wisconsin, where he lived from 1833 to 1843. Upon returning to Missouri, Scott sued for his freedom, arguing that he had lived free for 10 years in areas where slavery was forbidden. The US Supreme Court sidestepped Dred Scott’s question by determining that he was ineligible to present a legal challenge before the US Supreme Court because he was not a citizen and thus could not sue Sandford for his freedom. Chief Justice Roger Taney penned the Court’s majority opinion focusing on the framers’ intent. Mike Nicholas, “Supreme Decision: Roger Taney and the Dred Scott Case,” The Histories 5, no. 1, https://digitalcommons.lasalle.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1095&context=the_histories. When the Constitution was written 70 years earlier, the framers did not intend to include enslaved people as citizens. Chief Justice Taney stated that whether an enslaved person was born free or into servitude, they were not entitled to any of what we would now call civil rights. This meant that no Black person in the United States could enjoy either citizenship or civil rights, whether they were born in the United States or not. Note that Chief Justice Taney was not offering commentary on Black identity, per se, but on the notions of freedom and liberty. The criterion outlined in the Dred Scott decision, that if a person’s ancestors were brought to the United States as enslaved people that person could not be granted US citizenship, is not the sole way the Court has determined racial classifications. Other criteria played key roles in US Supreme Court decision-making in later civil rights cases. One of these criteria was the one-drop rule . In the 20th century, many states adopted the one-drop rule to differentiate between White people and non-White people. Individuals with any minority race ancestry were deemed to be members of that minority group. For example, Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act (1924) outlawed interracial marriage and deemed persons with any minority ancestry to be non-White, no matter their appearance or self-identification. Only persons who had “no trace whatsoever of any blood other than Caucasian” were classified as White. This is now referred to as the concept of racial purity. Several states followed these and related practices, determining minority status based on ancestry. Those persons who were classified as minority group members did not enjoy the full rights of citizenship and social privileges that were afforded to White Americans. Interracial couples would not achieve the national victory of the right to marry until the Supreme Court’s decision in Loving v. Virginia (1967), which overturned the Virginia Racial Integrity Act that had forbidden interracial marriages. Today, one out of every ten married couples in the United States is interracial/interethnic. Brittany Rico, Rose M. Kreider, and Lydia Anderson, “Growth in Interracial and Interethnic Married-Couple Households,” US Census Bureau, 2018, https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2018/07/interracial-marriages.html. Every year in the United States, June 12 is celebrated as Loving Day , to honor not only Richard and Mildred Loving, the couple who sued the state of Virginia, but also every interracial and interethnic couple. Karen Grigsby Bates, “Loving Day Commemorates When Interracial Marriage Became Legal,” NPR , June 12, 2015, https://www.npr.org/2015/06/12/413849120/loving-day-commemorates-when-interracial-marriages-became-legal. Report on Loving Case 1967 This television report includes interviews with Richard and Mildred Loving and the lawyers who brought their case before the Supreme Court on the day the court decided the case in their favor. One reason the US Supreme Court could reject Dred Scott’s petition was that the Court could decide that Scott did not have standing due to his citizenship status. The 14th Amendment , ratified in 1868 and one of the three Civil War or Reconstruction Amendments (along with the 13th and 15th Amendments), addressed this issue by defining citizenship: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” Recall that Article I, Section 2 distinguishes between classes of persons, “free persons” and “all other persons.” Because the 14th Amendment defines citizenship for all persons meeting one of two conditions (birth or naturalization), regardless of the race or enslaved status of their ancestors, federal and state governments could no longer determine who was a citizen—though they could determine who was Black or White. The 14th Amendment nullified Dred Scott . Equal Protection and Japanese American Redress Among other protections, the 14th Amendment includes the Equal Protection Clause : “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall . . . deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” U.S. Const. amend. 14, https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxiv. The 14th Amendment focuses solely on state governments, and the Equal Protection Clause is intended to ensure that state governments do not deny equal protection to individuals because they are part of a group. The government passed the Equal Protection Clause to prevent the kind of race-based discrimination that shaped the US Constitution as it was being framed, to affirm that the US Constitution bans slavery, to ensure newly emancipated persons the protections of citizenship, and to limit southern state powers. In the 1970s, the children and grandchildren of Japanese Americans who had been interned during World War II began to push for a formal apology from the federal government and reparations , or financial compensation for the economic losses suffered by those who had been interned in these concentration camps. This was an uphill battle because the wounds and shame of the era still traumatized many of the internees and survivors. The first major victory came in response to the lobbying efforts of the Seattle branch of the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) when, on February 19, 1976, President Gerald Ford signed a proclamation calling the internment policy “a national mistake” and officially terminating the executive order that had established it. Calvin Naito and Esther Scott, Against All Odds: The Campaign in Congress for Japanese American Redress (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Kennedy School, 1990), 4. Through a combination of public hearings, congressional lobbying, and national movement on the part of the JACL, Japanese American politicians (some of whom served with distinction in World War II), and sympathetic Republican and Democratic leaders, the United States government finally issued a formal apology and reparations of $20,000 per living internee in 1988. Helen Yoshida, “Redress and Reparations for Japanese American Incarceration,” National World War II Museum, August 13, 2021, https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/redress-and-reparations-japanese-american-incarceration. President George H. W. Bush issued the first checks in 1990, and in total, 82,219 internees received reparations. Sharon Yamamoto, “Civil Liberties Act of 1988,” in Densho Encyclopedia , https://encyclopedia.densho.org/Civil%20Liberties%20Act%20of%201988/. Nisei World War II veterans attend a tribute to the 100th Infantry Battalion, 442nd Regimental Combat Team and Military Intelligence Service in Washington, DC, November 1, 2011. (credit: “ Nisei World War II veterans from the 442nd Regimental Combat Team ” by Staff Sgt. Teddy Wade/Wikimedia Commons) As the case of Japanese American internment illustrates, in a republic, changes in public perception and public pressure on elected officials are necessary to achieve true civil rights protections for all. Government institutions often have their own individual political cultures, norms, and responsibilities. The Supreme Court is no exception. Despite executive and legislative measures aimed at compensating Japanese Americans, until 2018 the US Supreme Court had not publicly acknowledged the error of the Korematsu ruling. In Trump v. Hawaii , the justices ruled that President Trump’s ban on travel from certain mostly Muslim-majority countries was constitutional. In a dissenting opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor compared the administration’s treatment of Muslims to the treatment of Japanese Americans during World War II. In his opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts, who voted with the majority of the Court, responded that the two cases were not comparable, writing that “ Korematsu was gravely wrong the day it was decided, has been overruled in the court of history, and—to be clear—has no place in law under the Constitution.” Trump v. Hawaii, 585 US _ (2018), https://www.oyez.org/cases/2017/17-965. Executive Action A country’s executive, who might be a president, prime minister, or chancellor, is the head of the branch of government most often tasked with policy enforcement and implementation. As the face/voice of a country, a country’s political leader often has multiple tools of control and influence that are particularly effective in the arena of civil rights. When the executive acts outside their official capacity as the head of government or head of state but their actions are still seen as important and symbolic, they exercise informal executive power . On the other hand, formal executive power is power that may be codified by executive orders, statements to accompany the signing of legislation, speeches, or other official announcements. Representation and Political Culture Prime Minister Ana Brnabić poses for a portrait in 2018. (credit: “Ana Brnabić” by President.gov.ua/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0) When she was elected prime minister of Serbia in 2017, Ana Brnabić become that country’s first openly gay executive leader. While many hailed the electoral victory for its symbolism, others claim that Brnabić has had little formal influence on changing Serbia’s lack of civil rights protections for the LGBTQ+ community. Ron Skynovitz and Gordana Cosic, “Lesbian PM or Not, Serbia Blocks Gays’ Path to Parenthood,” Radio Free Europe , August 22, 2019, https://www.rferl.org/a/lesbian-pm-or-not-serbia-blocks-gays-path-to-parenthood/30123813.html. Equaldex, a crowdsourced online map of LGBTQ+ rights, gave Serbia a score of 47 out of 100; the country was recognized for offering a high level of legal rights, but public approval was low. “LGBT Rights in Serbia,” Equaldex, https://www.equaldex.com/region/serbia. This is an interesting case study because by all accounts Brnabić does not have the executive power to actually change the political culture of Serbia—a concept discussed at the beginning of the chapter—even if her intentions were to advance LGBTQ+ rights. In 2012, then–Vice President Joe Biden casually remarked on NBC’s Meet the Press that he supported the right for same-sex couples to get married Steven Levingston, “Speaking from the Heart,” Washington Post , January 11, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/01/11/gay-marriage-joe-biden/. (which eventually became law with Obergefell v. Hodges ). While Biden was still eight years away from winning his own presidential election, his words had a huge influence on the country. Some say they pushed President Barack Obama to affirm marriage equality sooner than he had planned. Biden’s remarks on Meet the Press exerted informal executive influence, but Biden was acting in his formal capacity as president when, in 2021, he nominated Pete Buttigieg , a former naval officer and mayor of South Bend, Indiana, to be Secretary of Transportation, making Buttigieg the first openly gay cabinet member in US history. Michael D. Shear and Thomas Kaplan, “Buttigieg Recalls Discrimination against Gay People, as Biden Celebrates Cabinet’s Diversity,” New York Times , December 16, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/16/us/politics/buttigieg-biden-cabinet.html. In recent years, cries for justice over Canada’s poor treatment of its Indigenous people—classified as First Nations , Inuit , and Métis “Terminology,” Indigenous Foundations, 2021, https://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/terminology/. —have rocked what is often heralded as a multicultural and accepting country. Forming around 6 percent of the total population, “Ethnic and Cultural Origins of Canadians: Portrait of a Rich Heritage,” Statistics Canada, October 25, 2017, https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2016/as-sa/98-200-x/2016016/98-200-x2016016-eng.cfm. the diverse First Nations community has historically been underrepresented in the Canadian federal government. The 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission ’s findings and 94 calls to action “Calls to Action,” Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2015, https://ehprnh2mwo3.exactdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Calls_to_Action_English2.pdf. led to a significant increase in First Nations candidates running for office. However, the May 2020 discovery of 751 Indigenous children’s graves at a former residential school in Saskatchewan has reignited calls for more national recognition of cultural genocide. “Canada: 751 Unmarked Graves Found at Residential School,” BBC News , June 24, 2021, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57592243. In response, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau used his executive power to nominate Mary Simon, an Inuit activist, to be the country’s first Indigenous governor-general. Reuters, “Canada’s First Indigenous Governor General Pledges to Help Heal Nation,” NBC News , July 7, 2021, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/canada-s-first-indigenous-governor-general-pledges-help-heal-nation-n1273198. A group of nuns pose with Aboriginal students circa 1890 in Port Harrison, Quebec. (credit: “Port Harrison (Inukjuak) Federal Hostel, group of students, nuns and Aboriginal men posing in front of the school, Quebec, ca. 1890” by Library and Archives Canada, Public Domain) While many countries claim civil rights protections in their founding documents and laws, disconnects between intention and implementation are frequent. In many countries, those in power have an unfair advantage in determining who benefits from—and who is restricted by—government policies. As a result, governments often fail to protect the civil rights of minorities. To challenge powerful majorities, minorities and their allies have formed groups and led great movements for social justice and equality, often arising from humble beginnings, ideas, and people. Because those in power benefit from the status quo, those with less power may be called upon to join together to work for needed change. Major government institutions, including legislatures, judiciaries, and executives, are responsible for creating, adjudicating, and implementing civil rights protections. How effectively they can fulfill those responsibilities depends upon the powers each branch is given under a country’s constitution and the political culture of a country. Further, a country’s institutions, built on existing power structures that favor the majority, may have inherently racist practices, and majorities in power may also lack an understanding of the way in which multiple minority traits may intersect—for example, for a person of color with a disability—compounding experiences of discrimination. Legislatures may pass legislation and judiciaries may rule on cases in ways that remedy civil rights issues. They may also seek to make systemic changes, as when India introduced public interest litigation to give citizens the ability to appeal directly to the federal judiciary and to ask judges to intervene in political issues. Presidents and executives have the power to influence civil rights in both formal ways, as when they sign executive orders, and in more symbolic, informal ways. In the United States, the three branches of government may serve as checks on the other branches, as when the Supreme Court strikes down an executive order, or they may work together—either for the benefit of minorities or to enforce discriminatory and abusive practices. Suggested Readings Abraham, Henry J., and Barbara A. Perry, Freedom and the Court: Civil Rights and Liberties in the United States . 8th ed. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2010. Brettschneider, Marla, Susan Burgess, and Christine Keating, eds. LGBTQ Politics: A Critical Reader . New York: NYU Press, 2017. Byrne, B., C. Alexander, O. Khan, J. Nazroo, and W. Shankley. Ethnicity, Race, and Inequality in the UK: State of the Nation . Bristol, England: Policy Press, 2020. Colker, Ruth, and Paul D. Grossman. The Law of Disability Discrimination . 8th ed. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2013. Dierenfield, Bruce. The Civil Rights Movement: Revised Edition . New York: Routledge, 2008. Fisher, Louis, and Katy Harriger. American Constitutional Law . Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2019. Goldstein, Leslie, Judith A. Baer, Courtenay Daum, and Terri Susan Fine. The Constitutional and Legal Rights of Women . 4th ed. Saint Paul, MN: West Academic Publishing, 2019. Pohlmann, Marcus. Black Politics in Conservative America . 4th ed. Cornwall on Hudson, NY: Sloan Publishing, 2020. Rothstein, Laura F., and Julia Irzyk. Disabilities and the Law . 4th ed. Rochester, NY: Lawyers Cooperative Publishing, 2020. Wilkerson, Isabel. The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration . New York: Vintage, 2011. 14th Amendment created birthright citizenship for anyone born in the United States, guaranteed equal protection under the law, and mandated due process by the states Dred Scott v. Sandford a Supreme Court decision that denied citizenship to all enslaved people of African American descent, even those born in the United States Equal Protection Clause a feature of the 14th Amendment that requires the state governments must treat all people the same formal executive power the power of presidents and governors derived from constitutions; may also be generated by laws, executive orders, and other agreements informal executive power the power of presidents and governors derived from their ability to influence political and civil discourse through rhetoric and symbolic representation institutional racism the idea that, because government institutions are built and run by those in power, whose worldviews and goals aim to perpetuate the status quo from which they benefit, government institutions therefore reinforce norms and values that enshrine racist attitudes, policies, and practices to the detriment of marginalized groups intersectionality the theory that individuals may embody multiple minority traits that compound the discrimination they experience Loving v. Virginia a landmark Supreme Court decision that overturned all state laws denying interracial heterosexual couples the right to marry one-drop rule the now-discredited, racist idea that an individual with even one ancestor of African descent was deemed Black reparations government-mandated financial compensation for survivors and descendants of people who experienced civil rights violations

Social Sciences


Introduction Barbara Mikulski was the first woman to be elected to the United States Senate during a regular election cycle. She served in the US Senate for 30 years. (credit: “Goddard Congressional Visit” by NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/Bill Hrybyk/Flickr, CC BY 2.0) In 1985, twenty-five women decided to raise money to elect democratic women to the United States Congress. A year later, in 1986, Senator Barbara Mikulski of Maryland became the first female Senator to win a seat not by appointment but in her own right during a regular election cycle ( ). Mikulski’s historic win was thanks in part to the efforts of those twenty-five women, who met and started a political interest group and PAC called EMILY’s List . Allison Norlian, “After 35 Years, EMILY’s List Continues to Transform the Political Landscape for Women; The PAC Is One Week Away from the Fight of Its Life,” Forbes, October 27, 2020, https://www.forbes.com/sites/allisonnorlian/2020/10/27/after-35-years-emilys-list-continues-to-transform-the-political-landscape-for-women-the-pac-is-one-week-away-from-the-fight-of-its-life/?sh=786647f114ed. The name, which stands for E arly M oney I s L ike Y east (it makes the dough rise), was a nod to the understanding that in order to be effective in elections and in politics, people need to pool their interests, activities, and resources. EMILY’s List continues to advocate for democratic women who are running for office and encourages its members to raise money for electoral contests. EMILY’s List is just one example of the interwoven relationship between interest groups, political parties, and elections. This chapter will explore the role of interest groups in politics, their pros and cons, how political parties mobilize their own organizational agendas, and how these group-level activities intersect with political elections.

Social Sciences