White privilege debate

Why did the Federal Government allow segregation to go on for so long? (Arnold wrote): Because the South was exceptionally powerful in the Senate for much of the 20th century. Their senators tended to serve a long time because most southern states were dominated by the democratic party so there were few contested elections. This gave them seniority, and back then seniority gave you tremendous power in the senate (this was changed during the 50s by Lyndon Johnson, who eventually ended segregation when he was president.) Also, Senate rule 22, used to require a 2/3 majority to override a filibuster (today it only takes 60%, thanks to Walter Mondale), so it was easy for the south to stop any civil rights bill before it was voted on. ///// (MajorA-Man wrote): Unfortunately, most laws prior to the Civil Rights Movement were handled by the states, not by the feds. At the time, you couldn't do anything to break the rights of the states which permitted the segregation laws. They have to be ruled constitutional or unconstitutional and that didn't happen until the 1950s and 1960s came here when the Civil Rights Movement was on the rise. ///// (Andrew wrote): After slavery ended, it took another hundred years for white society to accept blacks as equals. Even among the most learned of white men -- men who have mastered Kant, Shakespeare, the Bible -- it was rare to find someone who recognized that blacks people wanted to be treated as people. ///// (tuffy wrote): The federal government took no action to stop the segregation in the South. In fact the SCOTUS case of Plessy vs. Ferguson(1896) said that segregation was legal as long as the equal facilities for the blacks were provided - the facilities were never equal. ///// (Caspian wrote): Because few with any real power cared enough to fight, and they didn't have the support to accomplish much until the 1940's. ///// (jepchamp wrote): Because these laws were made at the state level, and unless they were unconstitutional, which at the time they weren't, the Federal government could not intervene. A better question is why did the people of these states allow it? (Because most of them wanted it, of course.) ///// (armourer wrote): Every president from WW2 up to 1993 was a racist because this Man had to wait for his Medal of Honor. African American soldiers who received their medals belatedly, after a 1993 study revealed discrimination by every administration since WW2. ///// (Athena wrote): What makes you, today, think that segregation was unjust? Where, in the Constitution, does it say that you can tell me who I can and cannot see? Why is that the business of the Federal Government? Why does my college campus have a Black Student's Union? Started by black students? Isn't that some form of segregation and should it be outlawed? What about the Women's Center? Why is that allowed? ///// --------------- (Michael wrote): This country has great virtues... but nothing erases the reality that is a stolen land built on stolen labor. Acknowledging that blacks are fully human means facing that reality. The US is not so good at facing reality. And certainly not so good at apologizing. ---------- (Marcel wrote): You must have read, http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/05/the-case-for-reparations/361631/ If you haven't, it is a tough read, but worth it. It turned me into a reparations advocate... ---------- (Michael wrote): Great piece. I've been a reparations advocate since I read Exodus 12:35-36: "[On their way out of Egypt, the Israelites] asked Egypt for vessels of silver, vessels of gold, and clothes. God gave the people favor in the eyes of Egypt, and they complied. They took delivery of Egypt!" ---------- (Marcel wrote): Absolutely. I've gone from being someone who thought reparations was right, but politically impossible, to someone who unreservedly advocates for it in "polite company." Unfortunately America's own Canaanites haven't yet formulated their own reparations ask. I hope they don't hope to wait it out to resolution... I can't imagine the same country that codified personal property to the extent the USA has in its constitution will pay out without an intervention by a heavy hand. Regardless, I actually think it will happen, someday. ---------- (Andrew wrote): There is a new book by Thomas Piketty's _Capital in the Twenty-First Century_, which proposes a 10% tax on the world's biggest fortunes every year. In a review of Piketty's work in Vanity Fair, which brought it to my attention, the reviewer attempt to carry out the book's conclusions in the real world and counter-proposes that if we sought to re-distribute wealth from the top 1% to the really poor--the bottom 20% of income distribution--we could give them $75,000 each. But demand for reparations, are you serious? I think you are getting ahead of yourselves. The American power-structure will never accept giving reparations because it equates such a measure with the demand for the right to power over capital, which the powers that be equivocate with the appropriation of the means to production whose ends result is achieving the Marxist goals of the dissolution of wage-labor, the negation of social classes and the abolition of private property. I strongly doubt it will ever happen... ///// Now I read the article and, while I agree with you that it was a good article, in the passage when the writers says: Won’t reparations divide us? Not any more than we are already divided. The wealth gap merely puts a number on something we feel but cannot say—that American prosperity was ill-gotten and selective in its distribution. What is needed is an airing of family secrets, a settling with old ghosts. What is needed is a healing of the American psyche and the banishment of white guilt. I believe he is wrong. Specifically, I believe that the election of Barack Obama has assuaged white guilt to the point that reparations would be seen as being a betrayal of an America already plunged into grief over the responsibilities of its past. Don't believe me ? Look at this article: WASHINGTON (AP) — After the Supreme Court ruled a decade ago that race could be a factor in college admissions in a Michigan case, affirmative action opponents persuaded the state's voters to outlaw any consideration of race. Now, the high court is weighing whether that change to Michigan's constitution is itself discriminatory. It is a proposition that even the lawyer for civil rights groups in favor of affirmative action acknowledges a tough sell, at first glance. "How can a provision that is designed to end discrimination in fact discriminate?" said Mark Rosenbaum of the American Civil Liberties Union. Yet that is the difficult argument Rosenbaum will make on Tuesday to a court that has grown more skeptical about taking race into account in education since its Michigan decision in 2003. A victory for Rosenbaum's side would imperil similar voter-approved initiatives that banned affirmative action in education in California and Washington state. A few other states have adopted laws or issued executive orders to bar race-conscious admissions policies. Black and Latino enrollment at the University of Michigan has dropped since the ban took effect. At California's top public universities, African-Americans are a smaller share of incoming freshmen, while Latino enrollment is up slightly, but far below the state's growth in the percentage of Latino high school graduates. The case is the court's second involving affirmative action in as many years. In June, the justices ordered lower courts to take another look at the University of Texas admissions plan in a ruling that could make it harder for public colleges to justify any use of race in admissions. For Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette, whose office is defending the measure known as Proposal 2, the case is simple. "We are saying no preferences. We're not discriminating. We're saying equal treatment," Schuette said. But the federal appeals court in Cincinnati that ruled on the dispute concluded that the matter was not that straightforward. The issue, according to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, was not affirmative action, but the way in which its opponents went about trying to bar it. That is why the ACLU's Rosenbaum said, "This is a case about means, not about ends. It is not about whether a state can choose not to have" affirmative action. In its 8-7 decision, the appeals court said the provision runs afoul of the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment because it presents an extraordinary burden to affirmative action supporters who would have to mount their own long, expensive campaign to repeal the constitutional provision. That burden "undermines the Equal Protection Clause's guarantee that all citizens ought to have equal access to the tools of political change," Judge R. Guy Cole Jr. wrote for the majority on the appeals court. The governing boards at the University of Michigan, Michigan State University and other public colleges set admissions policies at the schools, which included the use of affirmative action before the amendment passed. Other groups seeking changes in admissions still could lobby the policymakers at the schools. Only proponents of affirmative action would have to change the constitution, the appeals court said. The appeals court vote broke along party lines, and there were other oddities. Two Republican-appointed judges sat out the case because of their ties to Michigan schools. One judge in the majority, Martha Craig Daughtrey, is a senior judge and typically would not be allowed to take part in the full appeals court hearing. But she sat on the original three-judge panel that heard the case. Civil rights and education experts who are not involved in the case at the high court said they expect the justices to overturn the 6th Circuit ruling. Harvard University Law School professor Tomiko Brown-Nagin said five of the Supreme Court justices "are skeptical of race-conscious affirmative action" and could be expected to side with Michigan. Those justices are Chief Justice John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. But Brown-Nagin said impact of such a ruling would be muted because "affirmative action already is on life support." Peter Kirsanow, a Republican member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and an opponent of racial preferences, was more blunt. "I would eat a copy of the 14th Amendment if in fact the court upholds the 6th Circuit's decision," Kirsanow said. Justice Elena Kagan will not take part in the Michigan case, just as she excused herself from last term's case about the University of Texas admissions program. Kagan worked on the cases while serving in the Justice Department before she joined the court. I THINK THIS CASE IS WILL BE THE BATTLEGROUND FOR "WHITE PRIVILEGE"; I DON'T UNDERSTAND ALL THE LEGAL COMPLEXITIES AS NOTED ABOVE BUT I UNDERSTAND THE FOLLOWING RULINGS BELOW [SNIPPET FROM THE WIKIPEDIA ENTRY ON THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN] In 2003, two lawsuits involving U-M's affirmative action admissions policy reached the U.S. Supreme Court (Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger). President George W. Bush took the unusual[not in citation given] step of publicly opposing the policy before the court issued a ruling.[21] The court found that race may be considered as a factor in university admissions in all public universities and private universities that accept federal funding. But, it ruled that a point system was unconstitutional. In the first case, the court upheld the Law School admissions policy, while in the second it ruled against the university's undergraduate admissions policy. The debate continues because in November 2006, Michigan voters passed Proposal 2, banning most affirmative action in university admissions. Under that law, race, gender, and national origin can no longer be considered in admissions.[22] U-M and other organizations were granted a stay from implementation of the passed proposal soon after that election, and this has allowed time for proponents of affirmative action to decide legal and constitutional options in response to the election results. The university has stated it plans to continue to challenge the ruling; in the meantime, the admissions office states that it will attempt to achieve a diverse student body by looking at other factors, such as whether the student attended a disadvantaged school, and the level of education of the student's parents.[22] WHEN I WAS IN MY SENIOR YEAR OF HIGH SCHOOL, I DECIDED NOT TO GO AWAY TO COLLEGE BECAUSE I ASSUMED IT WAS FULL OF SKUNKS LIKE THE ONE BELOW, IT WAS MY FORM OF PROTEST AGAINST A WORLD OF BOURGEOIS EDUCATION ! Princeton student releases provocative paper on white privilege By Kyle Lubelski, 5/3/2014 A student’s perspective about white privilege caused quite a stir among ideologies this week, following an essay published last month on the subject by Princeton freshman Tal Fortgang. The essay, titled “Checking My Privilege: Character at the Basis of Privilege,” appeared in April’s issue of The Princeton Tory, a conservative news outlet for the university. Fortgang articulated thoughts on the phrase “Check your privilege,” and demanded that he not be judged solely on race, but to the perseverance of his forebearers. Fortgang states, “Those who came before us suffered for the sake of giving us a better life. When we similarly sacrifice for our descendents by caring for the planet, it’s called “environmentalism,” and is applauded. But when we do it by passing along property and a set of values, it’s called ‘privilege.’” According to the New York Times, the largest argument against Fortgang is that he failed to understand the intricacies of the term “privilege,” while others remain more optimistic. Former Tory editor in chief Zach Horton commented, “He will stir the pot and get people thinking and get people talking.” This week, Fortgang appeared on a Fox News