You were a successful engineer in the Ukraine, sure, but why
can’t you speak real English?
If you just didn’t sound so corn-pone, people would take you
seriously.
You’re the best salesperson we’ve got, but must you sound gay
on the phone?It is hard for most younger people to imagine a time when Congress and
the courts did nothing to prevent violence against people of color while the
media looked the other way. It is even more difficult to acknowledge how
slowly things began to improve after the Emancipation Proclamation. It’s
true that progress was made; Harry Truman achieved some significant
advances by establishing a committee on civil rights, and then charging
the committee to design policies that would eliminate discrimination and
segregation in employment, the civil service, the armed forces, housing,
access to health care, public accommodations, voting, and interstate
transportation.^1
But it’s also true that anti-lynching legislation came before the Senate
some two hundred times after the Emancipation Proclamation and before
the passage of the Civil Rights Act, and two hundred times the Senate did
not vote, even once, on that legislation; senators from the South went to
extraordinary lengths to block such bills by keeping them in committee.
The House did pass the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill in 1922; this made it
possible for such cases to be tried in federal courts rather than state and
local courts, which were biased in favor of the person or persons charged
with inflicting bodily harm. In 2005, the Senate apologized officially for
the lack of action on their part, but yet, in 2005, ten senators voted against
that resolution (Anon 2005).
All the evidence indicates that there is still blatant discrimination in
employment, housing, education, the media, the courts and in everyday
interaction. Despite the passing of Civil Rights legislation, despite what
we would like to think of as a more enlightened attitude about social
issues, discrimination persists. Civil Rights legislation has brought about
some positive change, but it has also driven those who wish to
discriminate under-ground, where alternate, more subtle approaches to
exclusion have been crafted.