I’m wiped out from grading, but I wanted to note that on this day in 1954, the Supreme Court handed down the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, decision, declaring racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional. A unanimous court decided that segregation denied Black children the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment, which was ratified in 1868 in the wake of the Civil War. Brown v. Board was a turning point in establishing the principle of racial equality in modern America.
Since the 1860s, we have recognized that equality depends upon ensuring that all Americans have a right to protect their own interests by having a say in their government.
Today, that principle is under attack.
In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson urged Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act to “help rid the Nation of racial discrimination in every aspect of the electoral process and thereby insure the right of all to vote.” And yet, in 2013, the Supreme Court gutted that law, and in the wake of the 2020 election in which voters gave Democrats control of the government, Republican-dominated states across the country are passing voter suppression laws.
Today, Senators Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) begged their colleagues to reinstate the Voting Rights Act. In 2006 a routine reauthorization of the law got through the Senate with a vote of 98-0; now it is not clear it can get even the ten Republican votes it will need to get through the Senate, so long as the filibuster remains intact.
But here’s the thing: Once you give up the principle of equality before the law, you have given up the whole game. You have admitted the principle that people are unequal, and that some people are better than others. Once you have replaced the principle of equality with the idea that humans are unequal, you have granted your approval to the idea of rulers and servants. At that point, all you can do is to hope that no one in power decides that you belong in one of the lesser groups.
In 1858, Abraham Lincoln, then a candidate for the Senate, warned that arguments limiting American equality to white men and excluding black Americans were the same arguments “that kings have made for enslaving the people in all ages of the world…. Turn in whatever way you will—whether it come from the mouth of a King, an excuse for enslaving the people of his country, or from the mouth of men of one race as a reason for enslaving the men of another race, it is all the same old serpent.” Either people—men, in his day—were equal, or they were not.
Lincoln went on, “I should like to know if taking this old Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon principle and making exceptions to it… where will it stop?”
——
Notes:
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/manchin-murkowski-voting-rights-act-reauthorization
This description grabbed me more than any of HCR's previous writings:
"Once you have replaced the principle of equality with the idea that humans are unequal, you have granted your approval to the idea of rulers and servants. At that point, all you can do is to hope that no one in power decides that you belong in one of the lesser groups."
A system of rulers and servants contradicts what many of us in this community have stated before: We the people -- this time, all of us.
My thoughts wandered this morning and I started writing......
When you think about what "Equality" means one understands that effectively equality is not necessarily an absolute but rather it must be seen as a polarity covering 2 extremes and the distance and various gradations between them. Equality of opportunity and equality of results, whether it be at birth, in school, at work or in life, are the 2 absolutes, the ends of the range of possibilities and we organize society somewhere along the divide between them.
Implementing "Total Equality of Opportunity" would necessarily entail the denial and confiscation of the work of previous generations to improve their lot and pass on the fruits of their hard labour...or inherited advantages...to their descendants and thus making the starting point at birth evidently unequal. It would require societal or governmental control of genetics, reproduction and upbringing of children and the removal of basic parental rights to ensure that all children start on equal terms. It would require also that each child be taught the same material, fed the same foods and play the same games until such a time as "natural talents" emerge which then could be examined to ensure that they are in no way influenced by exogenous or biological factors. Sounds a bit like some futurist SF movie which makes one shudder to think of...a truly undemocratic state of affaires.
Implementing "Total Equality of Results" would possibly look very much like the "polar opportunity scenario" above in which "emerging talents" are not remunerated higher than the non-talents OR would effectively be the famous "socialism" of which the trumplings are accusing the Dems of targeting. It would be a world, without private property, in which, if harmonious, all gave willingly according to their abilities and all received according to their needs. The needs of the "one" however would not be allowed to differ effectively from the needs of the "other". All inequalities of results would be taken away by tax or other means so that none can raise a nose higher than his neighbour....all are in the same government or society determined hole.
We actually live somewhere in between these two poles and slide marginaly towards one end or the other to try to balance....or unbalance....society according to the will of the people or the power of minorities to impose their preference on the majority. The Voting Rights/John Lewis Bills are pitched at moving the median point along the polarity towards greater equality of opportunity with the obvious intention of producing indirectly thereby a greater equality results.
The trumpling Republicans on are saying very clearly with their "voter restricting bills" that they feel that Equality of Results has gone too far and is already excessively dominant in this existing society and this "unbalanced" position is stiffling the development of society, does not justly remunerate their "natural talents and hard work" and denies the work of their forbears in "creating"America....as if they were alone! They are "redressing" the balance and are wanting to move the median point away from what they see as this overweaning equality of results towards their definition of equality of opportunity where money, private property, inherited advantages, family status and networks are acceptable as part and parcel of "innate talents" that must be justly rewarded...alongside hard work of course..... which is an "opportunity" apparently open to all!
The obvious innanity of the extremes is one thing and the difficulties of trying to turn, nostalgically, the clock back to days when we had "Gentlemen" and their lessers another....both are undesireable in a reasonable, democratic society. How we achieve the balance and thereby harmony is not obvious as forces pull in both directions. Society evolves and with it its median point moves between the Equality's opposing poles.
A little "reality" and "oxygen" needs to be introduced into the debate and in terms of "voting rights" in a democratic society people have both rights and obligations...and both must be respected. Each has a right to vote but being served the voting papers with your tea at home or through your car window on the way to the store is perhaps not the best way of meeting your obligations in this democracy...a little effort should be required if at all possible. The requirement of that effort by society imposes an obligation on that society to educate all citizens to a level in which they fully understand and are capable of exercising the rights and meeting the encumbant obligations of being a citizen. That effort, those rights and obligations and the resulting electoral decisions must be protected by society by an absolute neutrality of the policing and judicial system. Without equality in the voting booth and of education, neutrality before the law and a great respect for the obligations that society requires of its citzens we are not living in a democracy.
What do you think?