Having read the chapter, the students should be able to do each of the following:
Distinguish between civil liberties and civil rights, and determine whether constitutional devices intended to provide equality under the law have been successful.
Distinguish between reasonable basis, strict scrutiny, and intermediate (or almost suspect) scrutiny, as well as comment on the implicit assumptions about appropriate means and ends which underlie each.
Trace the development of measures to promote racial equality in America, concentrating on the most significant milestones and analyzing the actions which proved necessary in order to achieve them.
Discuss the similarities and differences between the dilemmas faced, strategies implemented, and rewards gained by the respective struggles for African Americans, women, and other historically disadvantaged groups.
During the past few decades, the United States has undergone a revolution in the legal status of its traditionally disadvantaged groups, including African Americans, women, Native Americans, Latino Americans, and Asian Americans. Such groups are now provided equal protection under the law in such areas as education, employment, and voting. Discrimination by race, sex, and ethnicity has not been eliminated from American life but is no longer substantially backed by the force of law.
Traditionally disadvantaged Americans have achieved more equality primarily as a result of their struggle for greater rights. The Supreme Court has been an important institutional instrument of change for minority groups, particularly with its ruling in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, KS (1954). De jure segregation was declared an unconstitutional violation of the Fourteenth Amendment equal protection clause by the justices. With subsequent rulings on the transportation of students, affirmative action, and other issues, the Court has also mandated the active promotion of integration and equal opportunities.
As civil rights policy involves important issues concerned with social values and the distribution of society's resources, civil rights questions are politically potent. For this reason, legislatures and executives as well as the courts have been deeply involved in such issues, siding at times with established groups and sometimes backing the claims of underprivileged groups. Thus Congress, with the support of President Lyndon Johnson, enacted the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964; but Congress and recent presidents have been ambivalent about or hostile to busing for the purpose of integrating public schools.
In recent years, affirmative action programs, designed to achieve equality of result for African Americans, women, Latino Americans, and other disadvantaged groups, have become a civil rights battleground. Affirmative action has had the strong support of civil rights groups and has won the qualified endorsement of the Supreme Court but has been opposed by those who claim that it unfairly discriminates against white males. The transporting of children to public schools is another issue that has provoked deep divisions within American society.
