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BALLYHOOING BYGONE BUGABOOS

Bedamned the fact of a Black president! Perhaps, it is a perceived threat that he may represent. Nevertheless, it is evident that there are those who are quite ready to reach back into the past and undo the progress thus far made toward racial conciliation in these United States.

Just recently, Dr. Rand Paul, the Republican senatorial candidate for Kentucky, made it clear that he would have opposed the public accommodations clause of the Civil Rights bill. Incredibly, this shortsighted ophthalmologist, who may sit in the senate of the U.S. in Year 2011, feels that proprietors with businesses engaged in interstate commerce should be able to refuse service to any of the many races of which U.S. citizenry is composed, should that proprietor have a personal antipathy to a particular race!

Before describing what has become a drumbeat to revoke even constitutional protections of Civil War vintage, perhaps we should review of bit of history. It may be perceived that the Emancipation Proclamation freed ALL of the slaves. In fact, it affected only those Confederate states at war with the United States. In order to effect the manumission of those resident in the area of Washington, D.C. and Maryland, the Constitution was amended for the thirteenth time. (I like to call this the, “Second Emancipation Proclamation.”) The Fourteenth Amendment was instituted in order to insure the citizenship of the freed folk and their progeny. Following along shortly thereafter, the Fifteenth Amendment assured the enfranchisement of former (male) slaves. This was to be laughingly circumvented by the draconian Black Codes and Jim Crow laws.

As improbable as it may seem, there is a cabal in the U.S. Senate, headed by two supposedly enlightened Republican senators, John McCain and Lindsey Graham, either to abolish or amend the Fourteenth Amendment!!! Just over a century ago, the U.S. Supreme Court endorsed the intent of the Fourteenth Amendment that birth alone, within U.S. territorial jurisdiction, is sufficient to establish the citizenship of that individual. The target of these politically motivated senators are the so-called anchor babies born to undocumented immigrants in this country.

Of course, these senators are well aware that this is an exercise in futility. Sadly, though, many of the constituents a whom this cynical ploy is directed are not so well informed. Making a change to the U.S. Constitution is quite an improbable task. An amendment requires a majority of both houses of congress to be passed. In addition, it must be ratified by a majority of the states, within a specified period of time. An example of that improbability is the Equal Rights Amendment, a simple statement that women are equal to men under the law. For the many, many times it has been proposed, never has it seen the light of day.

The Republicans are stupid! They are doing this in order to drag out their ignorant, bigoted constituents to the polls for an off-year election. They must realize they are shooting themselves in the foot. Of course, they are beating the drum of fear against that inevitable projected statistic that, in the near future, Hispanics will predominate in the census. However, both the cynical lawmakers and their fearful voters are missing two salient points in this population shift: 1) The 13-20 million undocumented immigrants already in this country ultimately will be documented resisdents and/or citizens; 2) We need every last one of those who are here, and those who follow, in order to sustain an otherwise diminishing birth rate, tax base and continued contribution to the Social Security system that is beneficial to most of us.

It has been difficult enough shutting out the destructive demons of our hypocritical past; let us not undo that labor by weakening the constraints that keep them there!!!