US Politics - Civil Rights Flashcards
Racial Segregation - the Fight for Equal Rights
- 50 years ago the Civil Rights Act enabled Black freedom (1964)
- You are 5 times more likely to go to prison if you’re black, and they are on average 8 times poorer than the average white family
- ‘American Nightmare’ - America in the 1960s was a decisive moment, with the 1964 Civil Rights Act banning discrimination and segregation and ended apartheid separation (got the vote, erased Jim Crow laws)
Fight for Equal Housing
- 1960s Chicago saw black people still living in slums, with the poverty rate being 30% for black people and only 7% for white people
- Dorothy Gautreaux was the first person to protest this and fight for black people to live in the same communities as white people - she was living in squalid conditions in a black neighbourhood, and wanted to move to a mixed area but was only offered another poor black neighbourhood
- She filed a lawsuit against the Housing Authority in Chicago, stating that it was allowing segregation to continue by not allowing equal treatment under housing, and condemning the lack of public housing - she had to convince the courts that they were attempting to continue housing segregation
Equal Housing cont.
- Martin Luther King Jr visited and died later that year, and the riots that followed his murder pushed the government into committing to fairness and equality, and they passed the final civil rights act - The Fair Housing Act (Lyndon B Johnson) prevented institutional racism in the distribution of housing
- Dorothy took her case to court 1 year after his death, and she won her case, with the judge agreeing it violated the constitution by continuing to separate housing and this aimed to get rid of the racism in public housing
- Laws were however not consistently reinforced, and programmes to rehouse black people into white neighbourhoods were few and far between
- In 2019, nearly 50% of the black population live in black neighbourhoods in Chicago, showing segregation - Alabama’s civil rights statue has to be guarded 24/7
Fight for Equal Education
- Detroit, Michigan - home of Motown and and was the setting for one of the biggest fights for equal education for black people
- Riots in Detroit before 1969 would cause a lot of the white population to leave, furthering cultural segregation, and Helen Moore who moved to a white neighbourhood watched her neighbours move away
- The funding for public schools is reliant on property taxes, and so if you live in a wealthy area you have more revenue for your schools, but in a poor area schools are poorly funded - black people who moved into white areas that white people left would damage school budgets, and the quality of education was worsened for black people
- In Detroit, there were well funded schools in the outer areas, the wealthier areas, in which mainly white children attended, and poorly funded schools in the poorer areas in the inner city that mostly black children attended - a group of parents fought against this
Fight for Equal Education cont.
- A Kansas court case in 1957 established school segregation was unfair and should be banned, and the Bradley (Bradley v Michigan) case in Michigan was challenging the two-tiered funding system, and wanted to show how housing segregation created school segregation and how government policy caused this, making it one of the biggest challenges to education segregation since the Civil Rights Act - Roth’s plan allowed this to end by reintegrating residencies and therefore school systems, aiming to end segregation and discrimination in schooling
- The main piece of evidence that won them the case was a map that showed the segregation through labelled black and white housing and the school district lines - residential segregation - and white children who were in black school district areas were allowed to go to a different district to attend a white school, known as optional attendance, and so even the action and policy was unequal
- However, there was backlash from the white people as they were either implicitly racist and didn’t want to integrate their children into black schools, and also were concerned about the economic consequences and educational consequences of having to move to poorer areas under the Roth plan
- The President backed the white people’s backlash, and the Supreme Court was given the case upon appeal of Roth’s decision - there was violation of equal protection, but they banned the plan in all other states but Detroit, and so only Detroit had to follow a cross-district bussing plan to decrease segregation
Equal Education pt3
- Role of the Supreme Court is too decide the case, not decide social issues - a year before the Bradley case, the Rodriguez case prevented equal education for black and brown children based on the decision that segregation on school financing was not unconstitutional despite how unequal they were
- Nothing has significantly improved equality in education with black students being twice as likely to attend a high-poverty school than white students in 2017
- This caused a massive disparity in education, but Dorothy’s case acted as a blueprint to start highlighting the racism in public housing and to fight against it - having ‘black’ projects and ‘white’ projects was unconstitutional
- Affirmative Action - money had to be spent under the Fair Housing Act to right the wrong of institutionalized racial segregation (Housing Urban Development Agency - decides funds for fair housing and to address a legacy of federal racism)
- However, HUD allowed housing segregation to continue by not doing anything to change it
Justice and the Black Community
- Record numbers of violence and drugs (crack cocaine) and unemployment in black projects developed in the 1970s and 1980s, and Ronald Reagan (Anti-Drug Abuse Act 1986) declared a war on drugs, signifying a crackdown on crack in particular, with the communities of colour was unequally targeted, with the differential between powder and crack cocaine meant that 5-10 years became a common sentence for black people arrested
- Black people were incarcerated at a much higher rate, with the Federal Sentencing data showing black people being put to death at disproportionate rates and disproportionate impacts in communities for black men
- Clinton - Habitual Offenders Act; instead of addressing the racism in the system, they expanded the justice system massively (three-strikes law) - if convicted of 1 violent felony and two other convictions, life sentences could be given (the circumstances of the offence itself didn’t matter; if they had two or three strikes, they would be have their sentence decided on that fact)
Definitions - Civil Rights, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights movement and Landmark Rulings
Civil Rights -
- Typically additional protections to ensure that some are not discriminated against e.g. Voting Rights Act and Affirmative Action
- This is a fundamental protection of the individual that is not necessarily reinforced
Civil Liberties -
- These are the freedoms enjoyed by all Americans under the Bill of Rights, Constitution and Landmark Rulings
- These are guaranteed by the Constitution
Civil Rights Movement -
- Campaign for equal rights for African Americans who had been discriminated against
Landmark rulings -
- Roe v Wade or Obergefell v Hodges are examples of significant rulings that allow reinterpretation of the Constitution
Definitions - Supreme Court, Bill of Rights and the Constitution
Constitution -
- The articles that explain how the US government operates - designed for effective checks and balances
Bill of Rights -
- First 10 amendments of the US constitution which includes the right to free speech, bear arms etc
Supreme Court -
- 9 justices who are the final authority on citizen rights and laws in relation to the US Constitution
The Constitution and Civil Rights
- Origins of the constitution were designed on the principle of avoiding a tyrannical government and as such it was aimed at protecting the rights of citizens
- The constitution has significant checks and balances designed to check the power of the branches of government and in doing so protect the rights and freedoms of the citizens by limiting the power of the government
- For example, SCOTUS (Article III is the branch that allows a final appeal for the citizens who feel their rights have been infringed upon e.g. Miranda v Arizona
- The process of constitutional amendment is also very challenging so changing citizen rights is hard to do
- The Constitution’s role in protecting civil rights is in creation of processes to protect them, rather than creating them directly
The role of the Bill of Rights and subsequent amendments in protecting civil rights
- The bill of rights at first only applied to free persons - slaves and women not treated equally under law - i.e. freedom and voting
- 13th amendment abolished slavery, 14th gave slaves full rights and citizenship (equal protection under law), 19th amendment gave women suffrage and 24th amendment gave Americans the right to vote without needing to have paid tax (a method that was used to deny African Americans the vote)
- These two parts of the Constitution allow the explicit creation of civil liberties to b entrenched
The role of Landmark rulings (SCOTUS) in protection of civil rights
- Supreme Court has had the power to create landmark rulings which can reinterpret the constitution and enhance the civil liberties and rights of citizens
- Brown v Board of Education (1954) - stopped segregation with a doctrine of separate but equal and this was a key case in the Civil Rights Movement
- Roe v Wade (1973) - gave the rights of women to have abortions
- Obergefell v Hodges (2015) - court gave same-sex couples the right to marry
- Citizens United v FEC (2010) - organisations have the same 1st amendment rights as individuals
- This allows the reinterpretation of the constitution to modernise the protection of rights - some disputing over only 9 people make civil rights decisions, but this is a flaw of the constitution’s construction
The role of pressure groups in the protection of civil rights
- Because there are more pressure groups in the US (pluralistic society with concentric pressure group sectors), there is more of an ability to target different access points and gain more traction on rights; for example, through targeting the SC, targeting individual legislators and the President, targeting state legislatures , whereas the UK has to focus efforts on the Prime Minister
- Therefore, pressure groups are key in maintaining civil representation on issues and campaigning for more civil rights
- Both mainly use media and lobbying - however, in the US, PACs and Iron Triangles can be formed to create professional lobbyists
- This allows pressure group alliances through campaign funding to prioritise rights in legislation - the UK does not have this same ability
Types of pressure groups in civil rights
- Key types of pressure groups - protective groups (narrow interest of members, are mainly Business Groups, Agriculture Groups - trade unions, and Doctors / Lawyers)
- Examples of protective - ABA, AMA, AFL-CIO, US National Chamber of Commerce and National Association of manufacturers
- Protective groups in the UK such as the National Farmers Union (70% membership) achieves an insider status with their relevant government department and provide services to members and Trade Unions / BMA have a similar role, and these groups try to represent the issues of these groups
- Promotional groups are different; in the US, this includes the NRA, AIPAC, ACF and Public Interest Research groups, and they are issue based rather than interest based to ensure policy doesn’t go against them
- In the UK, this includes groups such as the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the National Council of Civil Rights - floating membership reduces power in pursuit of electorally insignificant issues
Difference between UK and US pressure groups and civil rights
- They have similar practices, but the US has more access points, they are richer and they are protected by a freedom of speech - similar legislation in the UK only exists through the Freedom of Information Act
- The UK does not have a access point through the court; 3 phases of pressure group development from economic interest groups under Wilson, clientelism throughout the 60s and 70s and Thatcher’s intervention in removing rights of pressure groups to be consulted by government to decrease visibility of special interest, and this led to introduction of select committees and this began a process of lobbying in UK PGs