I remember the signs from my youth. My family drove in the 54 Pontiac from Maryland to the Florida Keys in the late fifties. All along US 1 there were signs, Interstate 95 did not exist. There mixed with the Burma Shave signs
His cheek
Was rough
His chick vamoosed
And now she won't
Come home to roost
Burma-Shave
were the Impeach Earl Warren signs and billboards. I could tell how close we were to Florida by the frequency of the signs:
A few in Maryland;
Some more in Virginia;
Common in North Carolina;
Starting to mix with South of the Border signs;
Frequent in South Carolina;
Jackpot in Georgia;
Finally Florida and the signs evaporated;
And then the Keys a different state for except for jurisdiction.
Long after Earl Warren's death another Republican Supreme Court impeached Chief Justice Earl Warren; Justices Limit the Use of Race in School Plans for Integration. Earl Warren is turning in his grave.
Earl Warren is turning in his grave.
We the people of the United States have let hatred and prejudice prevail. For over fifty years hatred and fear have chipped away at Brown vs. Board Education. Sandra Day O'Connor in Grutter v. Bollinger argued that "perhaps twenty-five years hence, racial affirmative action would no longer be necessary in order to promote diversity." This was a further chip at Brown.
Earl Warren's consensus opinion in Brown vs. the Board of Education is more necessary today than ever before; not for black people but for all US citizens. President George Bush is the heir of President Nixon's Southern Strategy legacy.
From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don't need any more than that... but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That's where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats."
The Southern Strategy evolved into justifying racial hatred on religious grounds. The so called "true Christians" claimed racial hatred as a matter of faith; a sad legacy for all the Christians who supported the Civil Rights movement of the early sixties. Bush I supporters mobilized this hatred with the Willie Horton advertisements. Clinton disarmed that attack with his Sister Souljah moment. Bush II refined the argument by talking about the "Bible" (who can be against the Bible) and references to "Clarence Thomas" the anti-black black Supreme Court Justice.
Strangely enough the two Justices who were confirmed because they spoke of the importance of precedent (stasis decisis or static unchanging decisions) overturned Brown – hatred and prejudice have prevailed.
Diversity is part of the strength of the US. The fact that there are people of all nations, ethnicities, religions, beliefs, cultures, heights, weights , . ., and races are citizens of the US enables the US to better understand and work with all the peoples of the world. The cross pollination of ideas allows the US to be creative and inventive.
Anything that inhibits the interaction between diverse elements of the US, harms the US. This is the principle articulated in Brown vs. The Board of Education. The Separate but equal doctrine is inherently harmful to all and in particular to those discriminated against. But for the Vietnam War Lyndon Baines Johnson may have changed the US forever by eliminating the injustice of poverty. Diversity would have ceased to be an issue, because we people would naturally take advantage of the opportunities that poverty extinguishes. Imagine the US without a Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.
President Bush with his two Supreme Court appointments, his phony War on Terror, and his economic policies; has returned the US to the early fifties without the optimism of having just won WW II. Worse he has returned the US regulatory and tax structure roaring twenties. President Bush is a hateful little man who cloaks himself in Christianity as a means of covering up prejudice.
The 2008 presidential election is important. I wish and hope that a great leader emerges who can take the US out of depths the US has sunk to.