I am a 57 year old white woman who benefited from the Civil Rights Movement

[karynnj]

Written with respect in response to http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x5289500, which has generated at least one other thread. The original post is part of the dialog needed on issues of gender and race.

If you had daughters or granddaughters they very likely did too.

There was no way that the feminist movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s would have had the success that they did without piggybacking on the hard won achievements of the civil rights movement. It was the affirmative action legislation written because of the civil rights movement that was expanded to require large companies doing business - in any way - with the government to hire women in positions that they were never given before.

In my case the timing was perfect. In high school, a teacher leading a class on future careers, told me I couldn't take the folder on mathematician, but if I really liked math, I should take the "secondary education folder" because that was a job girls could get. I also refused to take typing (something I do regret) because the guidance counselor recommended it for the girls, but not the boys, on the college prep tract - saying that we would need to start as secretaries. I couldn't accept that boys that I routinely outperformed would start out ahead of me. Five years later, when I graduated college, there were great opportunities for women with degrees in Math, science, engineering, and economics. I got a job that my teacher would have called a "boy" job.

The other thing I have from my life experiences is knowing how irritating it was on one assignment to interact with people who thought and said that I got that assignment because I was a woman. Both HRC and Obama are far more that the "black" or the "woman". It demeans either to see them as generic representations of the demographic group they are in. If HRC was a black male with all of HRC's other characteristics (personality, history and positions) and Obama was a white woman with Obama's characteristics - I would still be for Obama. In fact, I have often identified Kerry as the politician I most admire and would have supported had he run. I do not think he is perfect, but if you use him as the template for what I think is good - Obama, with his emphasis on bringing people together, diplomacy, honesty, and his activist roots is a closer match than HRC. I am positive there are others choosing HRC for reasons consistent with their own preferences - that may have nothing to with race or gender.

Everyone is needed to move to a fairer society. As can be seen from the 1960s and 1970s, movement in one area causes movement in the others. Voting for LBJ, rather than Goldwater, was good - but it was the vibrant, powerful civil rights movement and the ground work done by people like Roger Wilkins within the JFK administration that made it possible for LBJ to push the Civil Rights Bill.

It sounds as though you feel that you are being blamed for the inequities of the past. Of course you shouldn't be. In fact, you likely took bigger risks in speaking out, than I a generation later ever did because your generation were the "adults" when much of this happened. You are my mom's age and I remember her anger and words when a neighbor came to our house with a petition against a black couple (both doctors) to persuade them against moving into our lower middle class town. She was so angry that she did not correct my about 8 year old sister who responded to the woman's argument that when they had kids, the kids would lower the level of their classes by saying that the woman's son in her class currently did that and no one was asking him to leave. (We were brought up to be much politer than that.) That was the early 1960s Northwestern Indiana.

One of the worst things of this primary is that people who have been supportive of both minorities and women are being accused of being either anti-woman and sexist on one side or racist on the other. In fact they are simply for one of them more than the other or at worst dislike one of the candidates for who she or he is - just as if the choice were Kerry, Dean or Edwards etc in 2004.)

[blm]

1. Thankyou. And calling women 'anti-woman' because we oppose HRC is sexist in that it

ASSUMES we SHOULD be guided by gender and IGNORE the facts in the historic record that any CITIZEN, man or woman, should be using as their ONLY GUIDE to exercise that citizenship.

When people are voting should they be acting as a man to do what's best for men? A woman to do what's best for women? Or as a CITIZEN to do right by their COUNTRY and all its people?

[EFerrari]

26. Exactly. Well said! n/t

[phrigndumass]

2. Very good post ...

... and lest we forget, considering equal rights for the GLBT community wouldn't be possible either, if it weren't for our fellow Americans who stood against injustice in the 50's and 60's up through today.

:kick:

[Ishoutandscream2]

3. You're so right. One thing built another

The sixties and early seventies are sometimes described as periods of social unrest, but I saw them as times for great opportunities. How I wish we could have the same kind of efforts today like we had then.

By the way, you're right about Kennedy. But I do commend LBJ for putting away his large ego and continuing the push for civil rights.

[karynnj]

5. I was taking nothing away from LBJ

He knew what he risked when he pushed for and signed that bill. He spoke of it at the time, saying it could lead to a long period of Republican victories. The really sad thing about LBJ is that if he had had the courage to end the war earlier, he would have been one of the greatest Presidents between the Great Society and this. He did opt not to run to concentrate on ending the war - and might have succeeded without Kissinger's and Nixon's actions. That was 1968.

[JI7]

8. i will always view LBJ as one of the best when it comes to social issues

Vietnam hurts his legacy. but what he did was very good and he deserves credit for it. those who cared more about their personally political power would not have done what he did on those issues like civil rights.

[JI7]

4. it's always interesting to read about how things were in the past

the whole "boy job" "girl job" thing is something that i never had to deal with. but considering how most of the students who were good in math and science tended to be the girls in the schools i went to, i wonder how many of them would never have even tried if we were discouraged.

another thing about your post is that it applies to other minorities also. all the newer immigrants who come to America and can do well is because of those who fought for civil rights. one thing i hate is when people use the whole "but we werne't even here when there was slavery" or "we had nothing to do with it". it's not even about that.

i wish people were more aware of why things are the way they are.

[karynnj]

28. Thank you for suggesting I post this alone

:)

[CreekDog]

6. We all benefit when people are given due dignity

:hi:

[stillcool]

7. Some things I mis-remember...

*1790 Only white male adult property-owners have the right to vote.

*1810 Last religious prerequisite for voting is eliminated.

*1850 Property ownership and tax requirements eliminated by 1850. Almost all adult white males could vote.

*1855 Connecticut adopts the nation's first literacy test for voting. Massachusetts follows suit in 1857. The tests were implemented to discriminate against Irish-Catholic immigrants.

*1870 The 15th Amendment is passed. It gives former slaves the right to vote and protects the voting rights of adult male citizens of any race.

*1889 Florida adopts a poll tax. Ten other southern states will implement poll taxes.

*1890 Mississippi adopts a literacy test to keep African Americans from voting. Numerous other states—not just in the south—also establish literacy tests. However, the tests also exclude many whites from voting. To get around this, states add grandfather clauses that allow those who could vote before 1870, or their descendants, to vote regardless of literacy or tax qualifications.

*1913 The 17th Amendment calls for members of the U.S. Senate to be elected directly by the people instead of State Legislatures.

*1915 Oklahoma was the last state to append a grandfather clause to its literacy requirement (1910). In Guinn v. United States the Supreme Court rules that the clause is in conflict with the 15th Amendment, thereby outlawing literacy tests for federal elections.

*1920 The 19th Amendment guarantees women's suffrage.

*1924 Indian Citizenship Act grants all Native Americans the rights of citizenship, including the right to vote in federal elections.

*1944 The Supreme Court outlaws "white primaries" in Smith v. Allwright (Texas). In Texas, and other states, primaries were conducted by private associations, which, by definion, could exclude whomever they chose. The Court declares the nomination process to be a public process bound by the terms of 15th Amendment.

*1957 The first law to implement the 15th amendment, the Civil Rights Act, is passed. The Act set up the Civil Rights Commission—among its duties is to investigate voter discrimination.

*1960 In Gomillion v. Lightfoot (Alabama) the Court outlaws "gerrymandering."

*1961 The 23rd Amendment allows voters of the District of Columbia to participate in presidential elections.

*1964 The 24th Amendment bans the poll tax as a requirement for voting in federal elections.

*1965 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., mounts a voter registration drive in Selma, Alabama, to draw national attention to African-American voting rights.

*1965 The Voting Rights Act protects the rights of minority voters and eliminates voting barriers such as the literacy test. The Act is expanded and renewed in 1970, 1975, and 1982.

*1966 The Supreme Court, in Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections, eliminates the poll tax as a qualification for voting in any election. A poll tax was still in use in Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, and Virginia.

*1966 The Court upholds the Voting Rights Act in South Carolina v. Katzenbach.

*1970 Literacy requirements are banned for five years by the 1970 renewal of the Voting Rights Act. At the time, eighteen states still have a literacy requirement in place. In Oregon v. Mitchell, the Court upholds the ban on literacy tests, which is made permanent in 1975. Judge Hugo Black, writing the court's opinion, cited the "long history of the discriminatory use of literacy tests to disenfranchise voters on account of their race" as the reason for their decision.

*1971 The 26th amendment sets the minimum voting age at 18.

*1972 In Dunn v. Blumstein, the Supreme Court declares that lengthy residence requirements for voting in state and local elections is unconstitutional and suggests that 30 days is an ample period.

[Adelante]

9. A well-reasoned, well-written post, as always from karynnj

Thank you.

"Everyone is needed to move to a fairer society."

There it is.

[rox63]

10. Excellent post!

K&R!

[ProSense]

11. Excellent. Thanks. n/t

[Solomon]

12. Beautiful. Thank you so much for saying this.

I shared an office for years with a white female lawyer who is 57 years old now. She hated Martin Luther King's birthday thing. She always made it a point to say every year, if it was one day in the year she would work, it would be King's birthday.

I never understood her animosity because from my point of view, she would not have been a lawyer if it hadn't been for the civil rights movement. When you examine the statistics, it can be said that the biggest beneficiaries of all were white females.

When I went to law school in 1977, about 50% of the class or more, were females. That was unthinkable before the civil rights movement changed things for the better.

It's good to talk about stuff so that we can start to see why everybody has different perceptions of the way things are.

[murielm99]

42. Look at Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.

Women's rights were added by a racist Democrat in an attempt to kill the Civil Rights Act. It was greeted with laughter when it was added.

Law school was one of the first places to see the change you have mentioned. A female friend of mine started law school in 1971. There were only two women in the class. Both of them were top students. But they were treated with unbelievable overt sexual harassment by students and teachers alike. I could not believe some of the things they told me.

Actually, the term sexual harassment did not exist then. It was a few more years before someone thought to use Title VII to stop that sort of thing.

I knew another girl who graduated a few years after me, with a degree in engineering. She could not get a job. So, she went to a prestigious secretarial school. She joined an engineering firm as a secretary, and a few years later, got into the profession through the back door.

Many of the reforms that women like me fought for came too late for us. We were allowed only to be moms, teachers, nurses, secretaries or librarians. Our younger friends and our daughters benefited, and that is good.

I don't understand your colleague, either. She must not know her history.

[Solomon]

46. The other thing that I hate, is that when people refer to

"Affirmative action", they think of black people and don't even think about white females as included.

Years ago, I had to get a black company certified as a minority enterprise. All the stock held by a black man for years, and we went through hell to get him certified. Meanwhile, many many other companies, in which the husbands merely tranferred 51% of the stock to their wives, were certified without question, as "minority firms".

This is another way that afffirmative action was diluted. People don't know this kind of stuff though. It's good to talk about it.

[redqueen]

13. Thanks.

K&R

[xchrom]

14. you benefited from the work of feminists of the 19th century.

sorry to bust a bubble here -- but the civil rights movement of the sixties borrowed heavily from the successes of women from the century before.
which paralleled the abolitionist movement of the same time.

and african american men got to vote before women.

however each pulled themselves up -- as well as pulling the other up. such is life.

and one more thing -- as long as women don't own their bodies -- i.e. issues like abortion are left up to notions of privacy -- women are still behind -- way behind -- the civil rights eight ball.

[karynnj]

16. That does not counter that the changes due to the Civil Rights movement helped me.

The impetus for the changes that occurred in the late 60s and early 70s were the direct cause for much of the change. In fact, with the unusual prosperity of the 1950s, women likely lost rather than gained on the issue of seeking employment. Many highly educated woman worked in that period in the non-profit sector both because of their commitment and the fact that the comparably responsible jobs in the corporate world were closed to them.

[xchrom]

18. yes it does -- do you imagine that the womns movement suspended

everything because they achieved the right to vote -- only to emerge in the shade of the civil rights movement?
that's just plain wrong.

[karynnj]

19. They were not the dominant force in the 1960s and 1970s

That does not mean they disappeared. At least from my perspective, living then as a teen and young adult, the civil rights movement was by far the more effective one. That does not mean that no whites were involved, nor does it mean no women were involved.

I never stated that our movements for change were no important - but that the very powerful civil rights movement that followed principles associated with people like Ghandi, led by many eloquent people all appealing to the values that we thought we believed in was exceptional. You can write a post of how the 18th century feminists impacted you - it would be interesting. What I wrote was my perspective - influenced by things read, speeches heard and lectures attended. It was never intended to be more.

[xchrom]

32. i'm talking about continuity --

notably in the 19th century in america -- til now -- efforts have been continuous -- that you weren't aware is a different matter.

but it never stopped -- it owes nothing to any other movement -- it precedes ghandi -- it has been it's own movement for a very long time.

[ginchinchili]

23. Keep in mind that women are the majority.

More women have to step up to the plate on these issues. A lot of us males are on your side.

[Catherina]

15. Thank you. My mother was invovled in both movements

and said the same thing. Thanks for all your work

[calimary]

17. Very good!

This is the one case in which "a rising tide raises all boats" actually does apply.

It's all about SOCIAL and SOCIETAL climate change.

[mrreowwr_kittty]

20. Great post! K and R. And I like your sister!

"...my about 8 year old sister who responded to the woman's argument that when they had kids, the kids would lower the level of their classes by saying that the woman's son in her class currently did that and no one was asking him to leave..."

:rofl:

[politicasista]

21. K&R for a nice post

:kick:

[knixphan]

22. great post, sister k!

[DerekJ]

24. K & R

[EFerrari]

25. So did I and what you said!

If it weren't for Affirmative Action, I never would have been able to go to college -- and not only because of the money but because AA required certain bureaucrats to look beyond my demographics and pay attention to my performance. It's funny that some people seem to believe AA works the other way around -- allowing low performers "in" when in reality, it's usually the opposite.

No one at my high school bothered to help me prepare for college because they @SSumed I wouldn't be going. Talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy. Thanks to the AA people at the community college, a way was found for me to go and it changed my life. fwiw.

[beachmom]

27. Great post, Karynnj. I had to laugh about the typing class. I am Gen X,

born in the late '60s, and in high school, computers were more common so .... I took a typing class. Don't tell anyone, but I can type close to 60 wpm. It's the running joke, that a woman should be shy about their typing abilities, lest they get stuck typing everyone else's stuff. Of course, nowadays, there are far less secretarial positions, with a lot of managers doing the work themselves (or mostly themselves). Thank you for your memories from that time. I was lucky that I could major in whatever I wanted, and that no jobs were closed to women except a few physically demanding ones (and I suppose fighting in combat, but I like that exclusion).

A different backlash is happening now. Many of us who have made the decision to stay home with our children are put down, that we're making a "feminine mistake". Well, women's rights are first and foremost about empowerment. Which means we can decide what we want to do with our lives, even if that choice is leaving the workforce for a time to raise our family. Other women choose to continue working which I respect as the right decision for them. Women's rights also means that we can do our own research and make up our own minds on who to vote for for president. Once again, I feel like I am in the midst of a backlash because I am not supporting the woman for president. I sense anger from many women older than me who bitterly say the younger generation of women "don't understand what feminism is", when we are busy taking it to the next step. By the way, some of the most accomplished female bloggers are stay at home Moms. Had they kept working, they never would have been able to blog or participate in our democracy, because they wouldn't have had the time or inclination. I know that is true of myself.

[NJSecularist]

29. Very good post. n/t

[Darth_Kitten]

30. Feminists piggy backing on the backs of the Civil Rights Movement?

Seems to me that feminists were fighting for generations, but I digress...... :sarcasm:

[karynnj]

31. Who was behind the Civil Rights Bill and Afirmative Action?

In both cases gender was added - but the initial force for it was the civil rights movement. I do know that feminists fought many battles but these were accomplished by the civil rights movement. That is the simple truth.

I have no idea how old you are, but I was old enough and followed the news then and from your profile this is not your country.

[xchrom]

33. ok --the womens rights movement is not contained by a nations boundaries

and that's a patently ridiculous thing for you to say to get someone to shut-up.

you are the one unaware of history -- and that fact is now just sad and bizarre.

the womens rights movement has always had an international scope to it.

try cracking a history book instead of reaching the remote and learn a thing or three.

[karynnj]

34. I've likely read more of them than you have and watch CSPAN more than all other channels combined

Not to mention I read the newspapers and news magazines of the time. You have not addressed that specific period of time. I was speaking of very specific changes at a specific time. That legislation was pushed by and for the civil rights movement.

There were of course many things done by the woman's rights movement. If you feel a case can be made that it was the woman's movement led to the Affirmative Action laws make it - but cite what they did in some specificity.

Frankly, from your posts, I seriously doubt that your understanding of history is better than mine.

[JI7]

35. she isn't denying anything about the women's movement which goes back many years

she is saying that the civil rights movement and what was accomplished then did not just help minorities but women also.

and this is true. i had many teachers who brought this up when talking about the civil rights movement and the laws passed at the time.

[stillcool]

36. "feminists were fighting for generations"

So were all minorities. I recognized a confluence for social justice in the 60's. It was civil rights, equal rights and the Vietnam War. Free-love, women's lib, sex, drugs & rock and roll. It was social unrest that brought all these groups together. I would not call it 'piggy-backing' I would call it a rise in social consciousness.

[karynnj]

37. It was a time of huge social change

but the civil rights movement was there in the early and mid 1960s. The anti war/sex/drugs/rock &roll stuff, which started in most of the country around 1967( Sgt Pepper, Monterey Festival) did not have anything to do with passing the civil rights act or affirmative action. It did scare the hell out of many people and likely was a factor in Nixon winning as a law and order candidate.

[stillcool]

39. I'm sure you are correct...

I was a kid. It's just my perception. Someone in the house I lived in came home from Vietnam in 1970. I was 12. That was when my awareness of something going on started to take shape. His presence, and all that represented, in my life at that time was pretty dramatic.

[grantcart]

38. Both HRC and Obama are far more that the "black" or the "woman".

Very wise - I see Obama as being more Hawaiian in attitude than anything else.

Great post and I have some other shocking news along the same lines:

The main beneficiary of affirmative action has been in fact white males.

The reason for this is that at the time that affirmative action came along there were lots of white males who were getting good education but their parents didn't have any special connections. The really good jobs were handed out down at the golf club to guys like Dan Quayle.

Affirmative action forced companies to standardize and formalize the process so that white guys who were qualified could compete for the really valuable jobs without having inside connections. It revolutionized human resources and forced companies to have a paper trail that would prove who was the best candidate.

[bigbrother05]

44. Thanks, again you are making way too much sense

Another example of the RW getting people to vote against their own interests. Convince someone that affirmative action or illegal immigration is the reason they have lost their job or their house and they won't notice how the Corporatists are doing their level best to turn the US into a feudal state. With the rabble forced to work every waking hour to feed and house their families and retirement a cruel, distant dream for many, they need every scapegoat they can find to protect themselves from righteous retribution.

Why do you think it was necessary to make Edwards disappear? If it was clear how constitutional liberty and civil rights were the cornerstones of freedom and democracy, the Neo-Cons and Wall Street would be stripped of their power and influence.

[karynnj]

45. No one made Edwards "disappear

He dropped out because he did not have sufficient support in terms of people willing to vote for him. He won just ONE state in 2 years. He actually had more media support in the run up to the 2004 primaries than Kerry did.

There is no case to be made that he had the best resume and was ignored because he was a white male - no matter what Elizabeth Edwards said. He had a rather mediocre one term as a US Senator and ran as VP, a position given to him - that he did not do a stellar job at. (This was not Benson running with Dukakis - where Benson was impressive.) You would have a better case - based on just resume with Dodd or Biden.

[quakerboy]

40. k&r

[EFerrari]

41. Kick

[uponit7771]

43. K & R