Sometimes I need to remind myself of the obvious things,
because they are so easy to forget. Only
two weeks into the Trump presidency, I hear endless shock and outrage that our
nation could do such things.
The outrage is justified.
But perhaps not the shock.
I think it’s time to do a reality check for the young, white
people of my generation. Many of us,
myself included, have grown up assuming that it’s obvious that all people deserve equal rights, opportunities, and
respect. Yes, we know there are still
bigots out there, but laws are in place to protect the rights of minorities,
women, etc., and our country is still refining and improving those laws. President Trump is suddenly casting all that
into doubt.
But here’s the thing.
These rights are not obvious,
in any historical sense. The sense of
morality that we grew up with is a really NEW THING—so new that our own parents
grew up in a time when these ideas of equality were neither obvious, nor
popular. The laws guaranteeing equality,
which may seem like ancient history to anyone born after 1980, are
brand-spanking new.
Let’s spend a minute thinking about the rights that we may
have taken for granted:
People should all be given the same
rights and opportunities.
The Civil Rights Act, which officially desegregated America and banned employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin, passed in 1964 after a decade of organized, mass-protests. It was followed by the Voting Rights Act (1965), which overrode state and local laws that had prevented African-Americans from voting.
That was barely over fifty years ago.
People of different races should be
allowed to marry.
2017 marks the 50th anniversary of the nationwide
legalization of interracial marriage in the United States! Mr. and Mrs. Loving had been arrested, fined,
and then kicked out of their native Virginia for violating the state’s “Racial
Integrity Act” which prohibited marriage between a white and a non-white. In the aptly-named case Loving v. Virginia (1967), the Supreme Court struck down all bans
on interracial marriage.
Children with disabilities should
have access to quality public education.
To quote from my Human Learning and Development class:
“Until the 1970s, most U.S. public schools either refused
enrollment to children with disabilities or inadequately served them. This changed in 1975, when Public Law 94-142,
the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, required that all students with
disabilities be given a free, appropriate public education.”
Incidentally, this is what Hillary
Clinton was fighting for back in the 70s.
Eugenics and forced sterilization are
BAD. That’s Nazi stuff.
Actually, the US had eugenics programs before the Nazis, and
we kept doing it even after
WWII. An estimated 65,000 Americans were
sterilized under these state laws between the 1920s and 70s—mostly poor women
of color who were deemed “feeble-minded” or “promiscuous.” Eugenics laws were upheld in the Supreme Court
case Buck v. Bell in 1927. Most of these laws were repealed in the 1970s. Even so, there was a recent case in California
in which 146 female inmates were sterilized without proper consent between 2006
and 2010.
You cannot ban people from the United
States because of their beliefs.
The McCarren-Walter
Act (1952) banned anyone who was believed to be a Communist from entering
the United States and also allowed for the deportation of Communists. President Truman vetoed the bill, calling it “un-American”
and “inhumane,” but Congress overrode the veto.
The act remained in place until 1965.
~~~~~~~
My point is, these assumptions we make about human rights—that
we consider basic, fundamental, obvious—are anything but. They are revolutionary. They are new.
They are fragile. We are the first generation in American history to grow up with these assumptions.
So be outraged. Be
outraged that Trump and the Republicans are threatening rights that so many
people died and protested and suffered for.
Be outraged that our country is now sinking lower on the scales of
justice.
But don’t be shocked.
After all, you can’t honestly assume that laws which have only been around
for 40 or 50 years will be permanent.
They could disappear as quickly as they came.
