by Richard L. Franklin
7/2/07
'Color free society' is the latest mantra among American conservatives, who have just achieved a stunning victory in the Supreme Court, where the unitary president groupies have recently ruled that race cannot be a factor in attempts to achieve more racially balanced school populations.
The efforts to do so in the past have come in part from the horrendous conditions of black schools across America, where textbooks, lab equipment, audiovisual equipment, computers, topnotch teachers, and so forth, are often scarce or totally absent. If race can no longer be factored in when efforts are being made to equalize educational opportunities for blacks, it's clear this country is quietly moving backward when it comes to providing equal opportunities for racial minorities.
Conservatives were positively beaming during TV interviews immediately following the Supreme Court decision. They quickly adopted 'color free society' as a kind of mantra that they gleefully bandied about during TV interviews. Hey, let's face it. The rightwing in this country has always been terrific at cooking up or seizing on nifty sounding slogans to sugarcoat or conceal their intentions to roll back the clock when it comes to such things as racial equality in America.
The dismal history of miscegenation laws popped into my mind as I reflected on the long history of the civil rights struggle. Way back during my college years, I and my beatnik friends would often bemoan these gross violations of fundamental rights. At that time, over half the states in the land of the free had such laws --- statutes which were vigorously enforced either by the courts or by the time honored, more direct method of lynching.
This conversation among so called beatniks sputtered along, lasting into the age of the flower children and hippies of the 60s. Such persistence was mildly surprising, yet this subject was still being kicked around over a beer or a joint during those tumultuous times. This doubtlessly was due to the fact that in the year 1967, 16 states still had miscegenation laws, a form of repression they were rigidly enforcing. During my beatnik years, we were attacking these laws as pure Nazism, and the hippie culture of the 60s would take up the same beat, only they called it fascism.
During the 60s, when I was in my college teaching years, we were still cursing those laws. Hey, it's tough being a true progressive in America. Yes, there had been minuscule progress in civil rights during the period from 1913 to 1948, but in 1948, two years after WW II, a large majority of the states still had miscegenation laws and were enforcing them. To wit, exactly 30 of our 48 states still had these totalitarian laws, and they were enforcing them.
At the end of WWII, in the year 1946, an event took place that was given short shrift by the white-male-corporate media of America. A group of whites, in celebratory fashion, had murdered two young black men and two young black women near Moore's Ford Bridge in Walton County, Georgia. God, who was only blessing white America at that time in history, gave no contrary directives to our federal government, which in any case just didn't give a damn.
Yes, there were a few decent folks in Congress who repeatedly submitted civil rights bills. It may surprise you, but over 200 such bills were submitted during the 20th century. Alas, every last one of them was voted down by white males in both chambers. As far as blacks were concerned, they were living in what clearly was an ersatz democracy. They couldn't go to the schools they preferred. They couldn't vote for leaders they preferred. They couldn't marry persons of another color that they unluckily happened to fall in love with. They couldn't even crap in the always well kept washrooms of the whites, or sit at the front of a bus, or eat at the same lunch counters. Hell, they couldn't even fight in the same trenches during the great war or fly their fighter planes alongside fighter planes flown by white men.
This was changed with laws that were fashioned with specific instructions regarding the treatment of minority races. Color was a stated factor in these new laws. Now the Supremes tell us color can't be a factor in trying to build a society with equal opportunity. They should be ashamed of themselves. How can they face themselves in a mirror? What kind of ghastly harbinger are we now facing in America? Our rulers have stated that color can no longer be a factor in socio-legislative efforts to secure equal opportunities for blacks in education. This will undoubtedly become an umbrella prohibition including civil rights efforts in health, employment, housing, and so forth.
I've tried to imagine what kind of civil rights laws could be drafted in which race could not be referred to as a factor. Of course, if America has indeed become a 'color free society', as our friends on the right are now insisting, I guess it would actually be absurd to mention color as an element in civil rights protections.
Without civil rights laws, America will inevitably start sliding backwards before ever reaching a dreamed of golden age when minority rights are fully protected. There is an ugly drumbeat sounding in the corridors of our state and federal governments, and it is even being played in the pulpits of America. The drive to amend state constitutions to prohibit gays from entering into the exact same civil contracts straight people routinely enter into is an ominous sign.
We still have a long way to go in protecting minorities from a tyranny of the majority. The current high court apparently wishes to litter that long, bumpy, potholed road with still another huge obstacle. Ironically, just when we have finally ousted bigoted laws controlling the skin color of those who wish to marry, our beloved 'constitutional democracy' is now at work on a state-by-state basis controlling the gender of those who wish to marry.
I apologize for my deep pessimism, but rational pessimism is sometimes the only healthy reaction.
Richard Franklin is the author of ‘The Mythology of Self-Worth’.
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