390 CHAPTER 13|CIVIL RIGHTS
CHAPTER goals
Describe the historical
struggles groups have faced
in winning civil rights.
¾ PAGES 391–96
Analyze inequality among
racial, ethnic, and social
groups today.
¾ PAGES 396–99
Explain the approaches
used to bring about change
in civil rights policies.
¾ PAGES 399–415
Examine affi rmative action
and other ongoing civil
rights issues.
¾ PAGES 416–19
Republican presidential candidates heavily courted him in 2011, demonstrating
his political clout within the party. While the federal abuse of power investigation
was closed without criminal charges being brought against Arpaio, a class action
civil suit is still in the courts as of early 2013.
Enforcing immigration law is extremely confl ictual. Hardliners want to secure our
nation’s borders while deporting all illegal immigrants; the alternative is to control
illegal immigration while protecting the civil rights of citizens and legal residents
and providing a path to citizenship for illegal residents who are productive and law
abiding. The issue seems to defy compromise: President Bush tried and failed to
enact comprehensive immigration reform, and President Obama has not fared any
better in his fi rst term. However, nearly everyone agrees that the current immigration
system is broken. Obama is determined to enact reforms in his second term. Any
reform that secures our borders while protecting the civil rights of law-abiding people
will involve compromise.
Civil rights policy encompasses much more than immigration policy. It
demonstrates that politics is everywhere: policies concerning discrimination in
the workplace, in housing, and against women, minorities, gay men and lesbians,
and the disabled affect millions of Americans every day. To see how civil rights
policy may affect you, consider the following scenarios:
¾ You are driving home with friends after a party. You have not had anything
to drink and are following all traffi c laws. Suddenly red fl ashing lights
signal you to pull over. As the police offi cer approaches, you wonder if this
happened because you and your friends are African Americans driving
in an all-white neighborhood. Have your civil rights been violated? Now
imagine a car full of white teenagers with all the other facts the same. Can
an offi cer pull you over just because he thinks that teenagers are more
likely to be engaging in criminal activity than older people?
¾ Scenario two: you are a 21-year-old Asian American woman applying
for your fi rst job out of college. After being turned down for the job at an
engineering fi rm, you suspect that you didn’t get the job because you are a
woman and would not fi t in with the “good ol’ boy” atmosphere of the fi rm.
Have your civil rights been violated?
¾ You and your gay partner are told that “your kind” are not welcome in the
apartment complex where you would like to live. Should you call a lawyer?
¾ You are a white male graduating from high school. After you receive a
rejection letter from the college that was your fi rst choice, a friend tells you
that one of your classmates got into the same school even though he had
the same grades as you and his SAT scores were slightly lower. Your friend
says that it is probably because of the school’s affi rmative action policy—
the classmate who was accepted is Latino. Are you a victim of “reverse
discrimination”? Have your civil rights been violated?All these scenarios 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 Conclusion). Applying civil rights law can be very complex,
but a central goal of this chapter is to clarify the origins of specifi c civil rights
by examining the policy-making process. This chapter will also focus on the
theme that political process matters by highlighting how civil rights enforcement
has varied over time and across institutions. That is, sometimes the Supreme
Court is a strong defender of civil rights and Congress is not. At other times, the
reverse has been true.