Marcy S. Sacks: The Danger of Careless Rhetoric About Civil Rights
[Marcy S. Sacks is associate professor of history at Albion College in Michigan, and she is writing a book about boxer Joe Louis.]
The day after becoming the Republican Party’s nominee for the Senate seat in Kentucky, political neophyte and “tea party” enthusiast Rand Paul insisted to National Public Radio, “I’m opposed to institutional racism, and I would’ve, had I been alive at the time, I think, had the courage to march with Martin Luther King to overturn institutional racism.”
Pundits on both sides of the aisle are weighing in on Mr. Paul’s prevarication about his hypothetical support for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a landmark antidiscrimination law.
Generally lost in the outcry, however, has been the senatorial candidate’s claim that he would have stood alongside Dr. King in his fight for racial justice. Comments like Paul’s threaten to mute the hard-fought, blood-soaked reality of the civil rights fight.
Prior to his statement, Paul has said that though he agrees with the intent of the legislation, to his mind the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is too broad. He has indicated he thought a private business should have the right to refuse to serve black people.
Paul’s effort to demonstrate his moral righteousness by paying vacuous lip service to King even as he decried government actions to redress racial inequalities follows a well-worn path. It’s a course first laid out by President Ronald Reagan, the preeminent architect of the dismantling of civil rights-era legislation.
Like Paul linking himself to King, President Reagan seized upon a similar opportunity to demonstrate his support for a single black man. In Reagan’s case it was former heavyweight boxer Joe Louis, whose death in 1981 provided an opportunity for a very public and official display of racial tolerance....
Read entire article at CS Monitor
The day after becoming the Republican Party’s nominee for the Senate seat in Kentucky, political neophyte and “tea party” enthusiast Rand Paul insisted to National Public Radio, “I’m opposed to institutional racism, and I would’ve, had I been alive at the time, I think, had the courage to march with Martin Luther King to overturn institutional racism.”
Pundits on both sides of the aisle are weighing in on Mr. Paul’s prevarication about his hypothetical support for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a landmark antidiscrimination law.
Generally lost in the outcry, however, has been the senatorial candidate’s claim that he would have stood alongside Dr. King in his fight for racial justice. Comments like Paul’s threaten to mute the hard-fought, blood-soaked reality of the civil rights fight.
Prior to his statement, Paul has said that though he agrees with the intent of the legislation, to his mind the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is too broad. He has indicated he thought a private business should have the right to refuse to serve black people.
Paul’s effort to demonstrate his moral righteousness by paying vacuous lip service to King even as he decried government actions to redress racial inequalities follows a well-worn path. It’s a course first laid out by President Ronald Reagan, the preeminent architect of the dismantling of civil rights-era legislation.
Like Paul linking himself to King, President Reagan seized upon a similar opportunity to demonstrate his support for a single black man. In Reagan’s case it was former heavyweight boxer Joe Louis, whose death in 1981 provided an opportunity for a very public and official display of racial tolerance....