On June 19, 1964, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was approved after surviving an 83-day filibuster in the United States Senate. A recreation of the NY Times front page article is available here.
Voting for the bill were 46 Democrats and 27 Republicans. Voting against it were 21 Democrats and six Republicans.
Except for Senator Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, all the Democratic votes against the bill came from Southerners.
Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona voted against the bill, as he said yesterday he would. The five other Republicans opposing it all support Mr. Goldwater’s candidacy for the Republican Presidential nomination.
[…]
The bill passed by the Senate outlaws discrimination in places of public accommodation, publicly owned facilities, employment and union membership and Federally aided programs. It gives the Attorney General new powers to speed school desegregation and enforce the Negro’s right to vote.
The Senate bill differs from the House measure chiefly in giving states and local communities more scope and time to deal with complaints of discrimination in hiring and public accommodations. It allows the Attorney General to initiate suits in these areas where he finds a "pattern of discrimination, but does not permit him, as did the House bill, to file suits on behalf of individuals.
As for the filibuster, it was the longest verbal blockade in congressional history. Those good-ol’-boys sure didn’t want blacks to vote. If I didn’t know better, I’d think they felt guilty about something and feared the possibility of political retribution caused by a black voting block.
Forty-three years ago, this was. Still we struggle with the same issue. TPM Muckraker notes today notes Hans von Spakovsky, a Republican nominee for commissioner at the Federal Election Commission, has testified before the Senate Rules Committee against allegations that he orchestrated the suppression of vote fraud cases against black voters in various states.
Von Spakovsky blocked a major suit against a St. Louis suburb and two other suits against rural governments in South Carolina and Georgia and halted at least two investigations of election laws that appeared to suppress minority voting, one of them in Wyoming, said Joseph Rich, the former voting rights section chief….
Monday’s letter included the first allegations that von Spakovsky torpedoed suits and investigations over alleged state, county or local laws that diminish the voting strength of African-Americans, Native Americans or other minorities or prevent them from voting altogether.
Von Spakovsky, the letter said, stripped the voting rights section chief of his authority to open investigations of discrimination without his superiors’ approval.
Some things don’t change, even when they should. All Americans deserve the right to vote. What I find notable of the extreme right activists that have our Great Experiment by the proverbial gonads, is their unuttered, unanimous definition of an American: White, wealthy and preferably Christian. Others need not apply.
This world view is as inaccurate as it is anachronistic. In the University of Chicago’s SSA magazine (of the School for Social Service Administration, Vol. 14 issue 1,) an article highlights recent research on multiracial identity and society. (Because I don’t condone the fallacy of "race," I’ll use the phrase "hyphenated Americans.") Such research avenues are new due to the changes made in the 2000 Census when respondents were able for the first time to list all ethnic groups with which they identify.
Some facts from the article:
- As much as 20% of Americans will consider themselves as hyphenated Americans by 2050.
- Nearly a quarter of the US population in 2002 was immigrants and their children
- In the 2000 census, 2.4% of the population identified with more than one ethnic group, equaling 6.8 million respondents, 2.8 million of whom were under 18.
In the nineteenth century labels such as "mullato" and "mixed-blood" were used not only in attempt to classify the population, but to reinforce class divisions and strata. Now, while we have widened choice and expanded our visions, we still have a long way to go.
"Our people has had a mixed race people for a long time," Ann Morning, an assistant professor in the department of sociology as New York University points out. "But now that the OMB lets poeple mix-and-match in a way they didn’t in the past, sociologists and demographers are picking up the baton and thinking about the context of mixed race. Part of the reason we are acknowledging it now is that in some ways racial classification doesn’t matter. Before, race dictated who you could marry, where you could live, and it was a way to enforce class."
Racial identity is fluid, researchers have discovered, dependant upon social groups and circumstances. Gina Samuels, whose research focuses in the white-black transracial experience, is quoted in the SSA article:
"The one-drop rule says if you have any black heritage you should be identified as black. But developing an identity is more complicated than that. The idea that one racial heritage always trumps another, or that identities are fixed and don’t change, does not reflect how many multiracials develop a racial-ethnic sense of self," says Samuels, who herself is multiracial and adopted. "It is much more complex than just identifying how society views and individual, or the individual simply choosing any identity he or she wishes. It’s the individual and society operating simultaneously, at different force, and one’s daily context that shapes identity across one’s lifetime."
[…]
Samuels also found that people don’t necessarily identify themselves the same way all the time. High school students among African-American friends or family call themselves black, while with their white friends or relatives, they may say they are mixed race. "And what someone calls themselves when they are 10 may be different then when they are 30 or change again at 40," she adds.
So what of the experiences of the millions of multicultural teenagers in America? Learning one’s identity is of paramount importance during the middle school years. This can be difficult for kids of only one ethnicity. Hyphenated Americans must deal with cultural discrimination from many directions every day.
As if to illustrate the problems of acceptance for multiracial children… hard right extremists used the results (of recent research) as ammunition for their arguments for limiting immigrations and interracial relationships. "I was surprised by that reaction. That is exactly what puts these kids in trouble," says researcher Yoonsun Choi, "If people hate me because of my article, that’s okay, I’m misunderstood. But if this is what these kids have to deal with every day, then we have to do better."
Being of one ethnicity or another is not problematic. The desire to promote dominance of one racial group over another, however, is a problem - as with the legendary filibuster in 1964 and the recent allegations of vote suppression and a lack of response by appointees in key government bureaus shows. American history is full of examples of race relations be used to promote the welfare of European descendents at the expense of others. This is a huge black mark in our nations history and in the history of civilization.
I maintain that racial divisions are fictitious. The concepts of race is a tool for suppression which has no basis fact. Recent work in the field of genetics and DNA sequencing support my theory that since we all can interbreed, be must therefore be only one breed of mammal. Mankind can only progress when it removes the chains of outdated societal modes and embrace our true unity. The world is getting smaller, cultures are intermingling in ways unprecedented, strengthening our genome and merging into one race. We’ve always been that. Soon (if we don’t kill ourselves in the process,) humanity will be so mixed as to negate the conceived racial divide for good.
I can’t wait.