CHAPTER 7 EQUAL RIGHTS:STRUGGLING TOWARD EAIRNESS 139 EQUAL RIGHTS: STRUGGLING TOWARD FAIRNESS Through protest demonstrations in 1988,students at Gallaudet I have a dream that one day this mation will rise up and live ou the tre meaning of its College,which was founded to creed:"We hoid these truths to be self-epident:that all men are created egualm provide higher education for the -Martin Luther King Jr. obeaining the appointment of the college's first hearing-impaired president.The students argued would be a severe setback in the captured in Africa,shipped in chains across the Atlantic,and sold in open markets in Charleston and other southern seaports.When the Constitution was oralmost a month in 1977 an unlikely group of protesters staged a sit-in at being written in 1787,the question was not whether hlack people would L'the San Francisco offices of the U.S.Department of Health,Education,and become free citizens,but whether they would even be counted as human Welfare.All the protesters were blind,deaf,wheelchair-bound,or otherwise beings.It was finally decided,and written into Article I of the Constitution,that disabled.They were demanding that the federal government carry out its each slave would be counted as three fifths of a person for purposes of taxation responsibility to implement Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and representahon.The Clvil War freed the slaves,but they were soon subjected which outlawed discrimination against disabled persons by organizations that fo Tegal discrimination,such as laws that prohibited black children from receive federal assistance.In response,Health,Education,and Welfare Secretary attending school with white children.It was not until the 1950s and 1960s-not Joseph Califano agreed to implement the law;among other accommodations, so long ago-that black Americans gained nearly equal standing in law with buildings constructed with the help of federal funds would have access ramps white Americans.And even today,it requires monumental insensitivity or and toilet stalls accessible to the disabled. naivete to say that America treats its black citizens as well as it does its white The San Francisco sit-in was a struggle for equal rights.In theory,Americans ones.To take but one example:blacks with a correctable heart problem are three are equal in their rights,but in reality,they are not now equal,nor have they times less likely to receive the necessary surgery than are whites with the same ever been.Blacks,women,Hispanics,the disabled,Jews,American Indians, problem. Catholics,Asians,homosexuals,and members of nearly every other minority This chapter focuses on equal rights,or eivil rights-terms that refer to the group have been victims of discrimination in fact and in law.The nation's right of every person to equal protection under the laws and equal access to creed-"all men are created equal"-has encouraged minorities to believe that society's opportunities and public facilities.We saw in Chapter 5 that"civil they are deserving of equal justice and has given weight to their claims for fair liberties"refers to specific individual rights,including freedom of speech and treatment.But full equality is far from being a condition of American life. protection against self-inerimination."Equal rights"or"civil rights"has to do Black Americans are the most obviously disadvantaged group.The ancestors with whether individual members of differing groups-racial,sexual,and the of most black Americans came to this country as slaves,after having been like-are treated equally.Although the law refers to the rights of individuals first and to those of groups in a secondary and derivative way,this chapter Reported on CBS Evening News of January 16,1989 138