Derrick Bell states in the preface of “Race, Racism and American Law”, “We have witnessed hard-won decisions, intended to protect basic rights of black citizens from racial discrimination, lose their vitality before they could be enforced effectively.” Bell writes. Page 8; “The history revealed here suggests three points about race and racism in American policy-making that are part of the answer. 1. What appears to be progress toward racial justice is, in fact, a cyclical process. Barriers are lowered in one era only to reveal a new set of often more sophisticated but no less effective policies that maintain blacks in a subordinate status. Their status as slaves from the seventeenth through much of the nineteenth centuries evolved into segregation after a brief Reconstruction period. And the post Brown period in the mid-twentieth century has brought us the “eerily awful equal opportunity era”: “Eerie” because some blacks seem to be making substantial moves into the mainstream; “Awful” because so many blacks have disappeared into poverty with all its afflictions. 2. Significant progress for blacks is achieved when the goals of blacks coincide with the perceived needs of whites. For example, blacks gained their freedom when Abraham Lincoln recognized that ending slavery would help preserve the union; job opportunities for blacks always improve during the labor shortages that exist during times of war. Alas, these gains seldom survive the crisis that created them. 3. Serious differences between whites are often resolved through compromises that sacrifice the rights of blacks. When the disputed presidential election of 1876 threatened a renewed civil war, a compromise was effected that withdrew Northern troops from the South and left the fate of the newly freed blacks to their former masters. And working class whites insisted on official segregation as the price of their continued support of elite policymakers, they gained a shaky status at the expense of blacks that the Supreme Court ratified in 1896. Of course, the classic sacrifice of blacks was that made by the Framers to secure Southern support for the constitution. The original Constitution contained no less than several provisions intended to recognize and protect property in slaves. To say the least, this was a serious contradiction in a document intended to insure basic liberties to all.
Posted on: Sat, 27 Jul 2013 19:34:01 +0000
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