146 PART TWO INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS CHAPTER 7*EQUAL RIGHT5:STRUGGLING TOWARD EAIRNESS 147 Percent voting bestowed by the more powerful upon the less powerful.And,as the effort of AN☑生HS☑ 0 black Americans to acquire voting rights illustrates,efforts to achieve legal equality may require decades of struggle before they succeed. Homosexual Rights Whites n1985he5 Resistance to granting disadvantaged groups a greater degree of equality is upreme Court ruled that the Corstitution rooted in prejudice and privilege.Certain groups have always claimed superiori- does not give consenting 60 ty over other groups on the basis of superficial differences such as skin color. adults the rignt to have Even today,more than a fourth of white Americans claim that the black race is "Tess able"than their own race.1 Legal discrimination serves the material interests as well as the status needs of a dominant group.The classic case was disapprove of this ruling? When asked this question in the white southern plantation owner,for whom slavery was an issue not of a Gallup poll,51 percent of FIGURE 7-2 Voter Turnout in human freedom and dignity but of a lavish lifestyle built on the sweat and blood the respondents said that Presidential Campaigns among they approved and 41 percent Black and White Americans, of the black race. 20 said that they disapproved (8 1952-1985 Equality is a subject that loses urgency when it is considered apart from its nt had no pa ion) Voter tumout among black historical context.The compelling need for the 1964 Civil Rights Act and other such laws,and the great triumph their passage represents,cannot be under- Court said,in effect,that during the 1960s as legal 0 stood without an awareness of the long struggle that led up to them.We can homosexuals are not a legally obstacles to their voting were 195256606468727680 日4 88 establish this context by looking briefly at the efforts of American blacks, protected category. Election Stdies,1952-1988 women,Native Americans,Hispanics,and Asians to achieve fuller equality. certain other groups. including radal minorithes, women.and the elderly. From the late 1950s to 1968,black registration and voting rose sharply (see What legal,political,or other Figure 7-2);the increase was especially pronounced in the South.In Mississippi, BLACK AMERICANS siderabons might justify society in treating black registration rose by 900 percent in just the five years from 1965 to 1970 homesexuals differently from The influx of black voters into the southern electorate does not mean that race is Of all America's problems,none has been so persistent as the white race's unwillingness to yield a full share of society's benefits to members of the black no longer an issue in the region's politics,but its impact has been diminished and candidates who might previously have run blatantly racist campaigns have race.It took a civil war to bring slavery to an end,but the conflict did not stop been forced to moderate their appeals to bigotry." institutionalized racism.When Reconstruction ended in 1877 with the with- Blacks have had some success in winning election to public office.Although drawal of federal troops from the South,southern whites regained power and the percentage of black elected officials nationwide is still far below the gradually reestablished racial segregation by enacting laws that prohibited black proportion of blacks in the population,it has risen sharply since the early citizens from using the same public facilities as whites.1 The Supreme Court 1960s.15 As of 1989,there were more than twenty black members of Congress accepted this arrangement in Plessy v.Ferguson(1896),ruling that"separate" and 200 black mayors-including the mayors of Los Angeles,Philadelphia, facilities for the two races did not violate the equal-protection clause of the Atlanta,and Detroit. Fourteenth Amendment as long as the facilities were "equal."8 Congress renewed the Voting Rights Act in 1970,1975,and 1982.The 1982 The Court proceeded to ignore its own standard,allowing southern states and extension is noteworthy because it renews the act for twenty years and requires communities to maintain inferior facilites for their black residents.Public states and localities to clear with federal officials any electoral change that has schools for blacks nearly always had fewer teachers and books and less the effect,intended or not,of reducing the voting power of a minority group classroom space than did those for whites.In some cases,no facilities at all were This provision has the potential to enable minorities to increase their electoral established for the black community;for example,in the whole of the Deep influence.When congressional-district boundaries are redrawn after the 1990 South,there were no state medical or dental colleges for blacks.Black leaders census,a state may find it difficult to gain federal approval of district boundaries challenged these diseriminatory state and local policies through legal action,but that appear designed to keep blacks or Hispanics from having a majority. not until the late 1930s and 1940s did the Supreme Court begin to modify its Plessy position.The Court began modestly by ruling that where no public facilities existed for blacks,they must be allowed to use those reserved for The Struggle for Equality whites. The history of America shows that disadvantaged groups have rarely achieved an additional degree of legal equality without a struggle.Equality is seldom in 1989 Tom Bradley was elected uSee Richard Scher and James Button,"Voting Rights Act:Imp and Imp Paul M.Sniderman with Michael Gray Hagenace gualiy(Chatham.NJ:Chatham bo a fifth term as mavor of Los 5.Bullock II and Charles M.Lamh.eds 198530. Policy Angeles.He is one of the Brooks/Cole 19)ch.2 Bass and Walter Palitics 二益完装之满心 increasing-naumber of Pv.rg45163US.537189 nority-group members wha (New York:Longman.192) See Loren Miller,The Pefitiomers (New Yock:Meridian Books,1967). hold pablic o西e.民ick "Missouri ex rel.Gaimes v.Canada,305 U.S.57 (1938). owne/Stock.Bston)