150150 Chapter 5 | Civil Rightsto be more likely to commit crimes.^3 People who take this position argue that it may be
necessary to sacrifice some of our civil rights to more effectively keep neighborhoods
safe from crime or secure our borders against terrorism. Many, including former
attorney general Eric Holder, disagree with this perspective on purely practical grounds
and say that racial profiling is simply not an effective tool of law enforcement.^4
You probably have experience with questions of profiling and discrimination in your
own life, beyond the realm of law enforcement. In fact, civil rights are one of the best
examples of the idea that politics is everywhere: policies concerning discrimination in
the workplace and in housing and against women, minorities, gays, and the disabled
affect millions of Americans every day. Consider the following scenarios:- Scenario 1: You are driving home one night with a few of your friends after a party.
It is late at night, but you have not had anything to drink and you are following all
traffic laws. Your heart sinks as you see the flashing lights of a squad car signaling
you to pull over. As the police officer approaches your car, you wonder if you have
been pulled over because you and your friends are African Americans driving in an
all-white neighborhood. Have your civil rights been violated? Change the scene to a
car full of white teenagers with all the other facts the same. Can an officer pull them
over just because he or she thinks that teenagers are more likely than older people
to be engaging in criminal activity? - Scenario 2: You are a 21-year-old Asian-American woman applying for your first job
out of college. After being turned down for a job at an engineering firm, you suspect
that you didn’t get the job because you are a woman and because management
thought that you would not fit in with the “good ol’ boy” atmosphere of the firm.
Have your civil rights been violated? - Scenario 3: You and your gay partner are told that “your kind” are not welcome in
the apartment complex that you want to live in. Should you call a lawyer? - Scenario 4: You are a white male graduating from high school. You have just
received a letter of rejection from the college that was first on your list. You are very
disappointed, but then you get angry when a friend tells you that one of your class-
mates got into the same school even though he had virtually the same grades as
you and his SAT scores were a bit lower. Your friend says that it is probably because
of the school’s affirmative action policy—the classmate who was accepted is Latino.
Are you a victim of “reverse discrimination”? Have your civil rights been violated?
All of these scenarios would seem to be civil rights violations. However, some
are, some are not, and some depend on additional considerations (we will return
to these examples in the chapter’s conclusion). Is it ever acceptable to treat people
differently based on the color of their skin, their ethnic status, their gender, or their
sexual orientation, in a situation of racial profiling or otherwise? More broadly, when is
discrimination legal, and when isn’t it? How are civil rights in the United States defined
today?The Context of Civil Rights
In general, civil rights are rights that guarantee individuals freedom from
discrimination. In the United States, individuals’ civil rights are monitored by the U.S.
Commission on Civil Rights, a bipartisan, independent federal commission that was
established by the 1957 Civil Rights Act.^5 The commission’s mission is to “appraiseDESCRIBE THE HISTORICAL
STRUGGLES GROUPS HAVE
FACED IN WINNING CIVIL
RIGHTScivil rights
Rights that guarantee individuals
freedom from discrimination. These
rights are generally grounded in
the equal protection clause of the
Fourteenth Amendment and more
specifically laid out in laws passed
by Congress, such as the 1964 Civil
Rights Act.Full_06_APT_64431_ch05_148-197.indd 150 16/11/18 1:27 PM