Dear John Edward Philips:
But my larger point remains that leaders should lead when it comes to doing what is right and just and not get paralyzed by opinion polls. Not being an expert on civil rights laws or woman's suffrage, I hesitate to get deep into these specific subject areas and would rather defer to the experts on this list. But I will say this. First, on the question of Woman's suffrage, I believe the 19th Amendment was approved first by the US Senate in 1919 and then sent to the states for ratification. It was ratified by sufficient number of states in 1920. So I think you have it backwards, In any case, it took over 150 years to achieve woman's suffrage in the US through a combination of dogged activism and bold leadership --sometimes pushing against public opinion. Same with the Civil Right Laws. I see you referred specifically to the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964. I suspect you know that before 1964, there were other civil rights laws such as the Voting Rights Law of 1957 and the Civil Rights Act of 1875. And other civil rights laws have been enacted since 1964. Again, it took more than a century to establish the civil rights laws we currently have in place and my layman's reading of history suggests that there wasn't consistent majority support for the passage and enforcement of these laws throughout this period and across all regions of the country. The resistance in the South to school desegregation and voting rights laws, for instance, illustrates above point. And as Paul Burstein noted in his essay Public Opinion, Demonstrations, and the Passage of Antidiscrimination Legislation, while Congress tends to pass laws when a majority of the population favors such laws, opinion polls "are strongly affected by question wordings, so a finding that a majority of the public favors a particular course of action must be interpreted very cautiously. People are likely to agree with abstractly worded democratic or egalitarian principles, but are often much less positive when asked about applying the principles in their own lives. People may favor rights in principle, but oppose laws to guarantee them, object to paying the costs of enforcement, or fail to understand the complexities involved in a favored course of action. Intensity of feeling and willingness to translate feeling into action are sometimes difficult to gauge." And there you have it (as my brother Bolaji Aluko would say).
Gracias,
-Okey
On Jul 3, 2012, at 10:45 PM, Okechukwu Ukaga wrote:Do you have any evidence to back up these assertions?
> It is pertinent to note that when the civil right laws were passed in the US a majority of Americans were against those laws too. Same thing with allowing women to vote.
A quick google search give me data that approximately 60% of Americans supported the Civil Rights Act of 1964 when it was passed.
Votes for women first happened state by state, so that by the time a federal Constitutional Amendment was voted by Congress there had already been a woman in Congress. State legislators in states that allowed women to vote were not about to turn down a woman's suffrage amendment.
John Edward Philips <http://human.cc.hirosaki-u.ac.jp/philips/>
International Society, College of Humanities, Hirosaki University
"Homo sum; humani nihil a me alienum puto." -Terentius Afer
<http://www.boydell.co.uk/www.urpress.com/80462561.HTM>
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the "USA-Africa Dialogue Series" moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin.
For current archives, visit http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
For previous archives, visit http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue-
unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
Executive Director and Extension Professor,
"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." - Richard Buckminster Fuller
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the "USA-Africa Dialogue Series" moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin.
For current archives, visit http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
For previous archives, visit http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue-
unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
No comments:
Post a Comment