Civil Rights and other Social Changes: Wouldn't they have occured anyway?

Great Debates
1

With all of the debate over Rand Paul’s Libertarian view that things such as the Civil Rights Act were not necessary steps for a Constitutional Republic to take in order to ensure no tyranny of the majority, one of the views of those in favor of such a stance is that actions taken by government to protect certain classes of people are unnecessary because eventually society would realize that such prejudices run counter to productivity. In their mind, the playing fields would eventually become level without interferance from the courts or legislators.

Is there evidence for this view? Are there societies or regions - ideally contemporary ones - where sweeping change in race relations, gender equality, or any other class equality came about without the guidance of a government whose hands were forced?

My personal feeling on the matter is that the South would still have ‘Whites Only’ signs now if changes were not mandated during the Civil Rights Era. The way I see it, the Civil Rights Act came about almost exactly a century after the Emancipation Proclamation. My perception is that in those 100 years, things didn’t change a whole lot, whereas in about half the time since then, the difference is staggering.

Even when the courts did make a decisive, landmark ruling, puplic opinion often lagged behind. The images of the immediate aftermath of forced school integration are obvious but it took nearly a quarter of a century after Loving v. Virginia before Gallup polls shows that a majority of Americans supported interracial marriage. Yes, it wasn’t until the fucking '90s that this happened, which blows my mind.

Of course, there is a difference between slow change and no change. Would schools ever been integrated if there never was a Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, just a lot more slowly? There are only a few states who allow same gender couples the right of marriage and no real prospect of a landmark action from the court or Congress to change things, yet every year, more and more people poll that they’re not against it or they at least agree that civil unions are not a horrible compromise.

I am generally positive with how I view mankind but I cannot help but be cynical that most societies would be able to make these changes even though they are not just fair, but beneficial to the societies in tangible, proven ways.

To use a phrase from the Civil Rights Era, could we overcome without help?

2

It’s a common belief in the west- perhaps stemming from our linear Judeo-Christian sense of time- that progress is inevitable. There is a belief that things will just keep getting better and better forever no matter what we do.

This is not particularly true. There is case after case of progress going backwards. Afghanistan used to be a progressive place where women went to their university classes in stylish jeans. Germany had a pretty fun and free period before the Nazis showed up. During the period of independence, Africa was an exciting up-and-coming place to be.

So I agree that time alone is not sufficient to create progress. Good people will always have to be alert and working to make sure that the world keeps moving forward and we do not slip back in inequality, poverty and war.

3

It is, naturally impossible to say.

Sure, things didn’t change much for Blacks for a hundred years, and then the government stepped in in the 60s and everything changed. But in contrast things hadn’t changed much for women or Asians for a hundred years (or 50 years if you think suffrage was a revolutionary change). Then in the 60s things suddenly changed with essentially no government interference. What is demonstrates is that the 60s was a time of radical social change for all sorts of reasons. Attributing it all to government intervention seems to ignore that similar changes happened for other groups without government change, and just as importantly it ignores the fact that the government followed an already entrenched civil rights movement, it didn’t lead it.
So basically there is no reason to ascribe the changes to the Jim Crow laws to government action. that actions certainly sped things up, probably by decades, but I could make a pretty compelling argument that the changes were inevitable.

You could also look at comparable change sin race relation in other countries such as England or Australia. Racism was once just as entrenched in those countries, but it all rapidly changed in the post war period with no overt government intervention, to the point where the people of Australia demanded a referendum on Aboriginal citizenship and it passed by a huge majority.

There is no reason to a believe that the same changes wouldn’t have come to the South. I suspect that a large part of the reason why those attitudes held out so long is the south when they were rapidly decaying in the rest of the developed world was because racial equality had been forced on the populace following the Civil War. IOW you could make a case that without government intervention in the first place the South Would have seen the same self-initiated changes in race relations as the rest of the world was experiencing.

Or maybe not. We could sit here and make reasonable arguments either way.

In the US and the most of the rest of the developed world the feminist movement didn’t come about under the guidance of the government, it was a spontaneous movement that usually sprang out of the union movement and the concept of equal work for equal pay. The government legislated the way that the people wanted them to, they didn’t pass laws that were staggeringly unpopular.

I think this highlights part of the problem. You see something like the feminist movement as being achieved with government guidance and forced on the populace because the government passed some laws pertaining to sex equality. But that is rather circular in a democracy where a government is assumed to be doing what the people want. look at this as a classic exaple of a non-government sponsored change in the sense that it was truly organic and the movement demanded that the government act to enshrine it in law. And the laws themselves weren’t unpopular in the way that the Racial Equality laws were in the south.

I guess my question to you is, if you don;t see the feminist movement as being an example of an organic, non government social change then what would you need to see to characterise a social change as organic? If vocal, internally generated support from a majority of the population doesn’t qualify, presumably because the government enshrined their views in law, then what could possibly constitute evidence of non-government change in a democracy? It seems that your position runs the risk of becoming circular, since if a clamouring for change isn’t enshrined in law you dismiss it as not having resulted in real change, as in the case of British race relation, while if it is enshrined in law you will claim that it was government sponsored and thus not organic.

4

The problem here is that you are using culturally biased, patronising and blatantly imperialist definitions of “advancement” and “progress”. You have basically said that if it doesn’t become more like the US of today then it is going backwards.

Of course people in Kabul would say that Afghanistan had become degenerate when women were allowed to walk the streets dressed like whores, and that now it s making progress towards a true Islamic state. And the Nazis did say exactly that, condemning the decadent and licentious behaviour of Germans in the 20s and praising the progress made towards an Aryan society in the 30s.

Progress doesn’t mean “becoming more like the white man”. It just means movement towards a goal. The modern USA’s isn’t any better than anybody else’s.

5

It took a long time to get rid of Apartheid in South Africa. And I thought beforehand that it couldn’t have happened without a bloodbath. But that was a perceived danger that probably forced the government. So many changes occurred in the 60’s, its really hard to tell what would have happened here. I don’t recall that legislation actually caused any immediate change. Apparently hasn’t changed Rand yet. The death of MLK turned a lot of apathetic people to political action. But the accompanying riots were more of that hand forcing thing. Lots of social and legal changes related to racism were forced by the threat of ‘race riots’ throughout the 20th century. If you are looking for something based entirely on altruism, that may be hard to find. You sort of defined it as unanimous consent. There’s always going to be some hold outs.

6

Damn right, I am. I’ll gladly say it- Freedom is better than slavery. Education is better than ignorance. Justice is better than injustice. Equality is better than inequality. Peace is better than war. Prosperity is better than poverty. Health is better than disease. If that makes me a patronizing imperialist, so be it. I’m dedicating my life to these ideals- without them, the world is just buying stuff and masturbating.

I don’t think these are particularly American ideals though. The Ivorian child-slave, Indian gleaner, Malian leper, Nepali trafficked woman and the like would all be pretty likely to agree with me.

7

Yes, and we all know that everybody in Germany in in 1929 or Kabul in 1999 was a leper living in slavery. :rolleyes:

Like I said, all you’re doing is forcing your ideas of progress onto others, but now you are also engaging baseless defamation of the systems that you disagree with by saying that everybody living under those systems is an ignorant, penniless, exploited, leprous slave, whereas under the Magical 'Merkin system they all magically become free, healthy rich and beautiful.

The really aren’t enough rolleyes for this patronising nonsense.

8

Oy. God save us from moral relativists.

9

It’s not “patronizing nonsense”. The problem with your attempted argument for cultural & moral relativism, is that you are actually taking the side of the oppressors and exploiters; you are not in fact arguing for relativism at all. You are arguing that the values of tyrants and so forth should be considered equal to ours, but by definition that means you are dismissing the values of the people being oppressed and exploited.

And, as much as I despise America, it is in fact more just than much of the world, and far more just than the world has been historically. Most people, historically, have been something quite close to “an ignorant, penniless, exploited, leprous slave”.

10

What relativism are you talking about. Define your progress however you want relative to a goal. But when you start arguing that progress = more like modern America then *you *are the one arguing relativism. The idea that every social system that isn’t identical to modern America must result in everybody being a penniless, leprous, ignorant slave is patronising, imperialist BS.

11

No one is talking about “identical” but you. Nor is anyone else pretending that the situation is a binary choice between everyone being a slave or everyone being a pseudo-American.

But yes, in many ways for many places being better is being more like America. That is the inevitable consequence of America being better in the first place. It’s better to be prosperous, free and well fed; if America is more prosperous, free and well fed than a particular nation or culture then becoming better will inevitably amount to “becoming more like America”.

As for “what relativism”; you are the one trying to claim that slavery is just as good as freedom. Regardless of the opinion of the slave.

12

Bollocks. Quote where i said that or withdraw your nonsense.

Bollocks. Quote where i said that or withdraw your nonsense.

Bollocks. Cuba became became less like America following the revolution, yet the lot for most people improved.

The idea that a nation can only become better fed by becoming more like the US is utter crap.

Bollocks. Quote where I said that or withdraw your nonsense.

13

Imho, there’s a difference between knowing the difference between right and wrong, and being brave enough to stand up for it. I’m pretty sure 100% of Americans aren’t racist, uneducated, Fundametalist jerks. But, many of us don’t have the guts to stand up to those who are. So, we do need the Supreme Court or politicians to say, once in a while, what is right and what is wrong. That’s what leaders are for.

14

Who are we to say that moral relativism is not an appropriate belief for someone of an era and culture that espouses moral relativism?

:wink:

15

Nope – we used them all up on the absurdity of describing denunciation of Nazi Germany or Taliban Afghanistan as “baseless defamation”.

16

You started talking about all this when even sven criticized Nazi Germany and the Taliban. What was she supposed to say–that everyone in Germany was just on holiday during those years? Those places/times weren’t bad just because they weren’t like America. They were/are genuinely evil.

17

That isn’t true at all. There was a lot of Civil Rights legislation passed in the 1960s and 1970s as well as legal action. Brown v. Education. The Civil Rights Act of 1964. Loving v. Virginia, Voting Rights Act of 1965. Plus the Government had the National Guard in schools. I rode a bus to 4th grade with an armed federal marshal. I can’t say there was “essentially no government interference” when at one point in time the feds had hundreds of armed guards on children’s schoolbuses.

18

ETA - The legislation changes for Blacks in the 1960s emcompassed language for Asians and other minioritys. For instance, the Equal Pay Act of 1963 covered blacks and women - and has been used extensively by women. Title VI and VII have both been used extensively by other minorities (particularly women) in the court system.

These things didn’t change because a few women didn’t burn their bras. They changed because the legislation didn’t specify “blacks” and a lot of court cases were lost.

19

But the point is, the legislators didn’t wake up one day and discover that the citizenry were a bunch of racists, and so they decided to pass some laws to stop it.

Civil rights legislation wasn’t crammed down the throats of the American people against their will. Lots and lots of people supported the civil rights movement, including lots of white people. Now, if you had left it up to a vote of white people in Mississippi, they would have been against it. But Mississippi isn’t the entire country.

If the various civil rights laws were so unpopular, then the legislators who voted for it would have been voted out of office, and the laws would have been repealed. And notice that for a hundred years after the civil war, no such legislation was proposed, and in many parts of the country blacks were by law second class citizens. Why didn’t the noble government step in back in the 1880s, or the 1920s or the 1940s? Because the government follows the will of the people, and there wasn’t enough support from the citizenry for such a thing.

In other words, the people changed, and government acted to reflect that change. Not everyone changed, there were still lots of people who didn’t want civil rights for negroes. But there was a popular movement, it was called the civil rights movement, and it wasn’t led by legislators.

20

And those Islamists and Nazis would be wrong. Their goals are abhorrent. Damn your moral and cultural relativism. One can - and should - describe a thing as it is.

This is wrong. You are wrong. As much as one should embrace multiculturalism and accept and appreciate people from differing places, there are cultures that are worse than others - places where women and minorities are not free, where people starve, or die easily preventable deaths, among a thousand other horrors.

Being a white man has nothing to do with it. I see plenty of Americans around me that are neither white nor a male - but the vast majority adhere to a moral code that is far better than the moral code in many other places of the world. Is this country perfect? Far from it. And many countries do some things far better than the USA. But the goals here are better than most.