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Wednesday, May 06, 2009
Mary Grabar :: Townhall.com Columnist
1964 Act Should Guard Individual, Not Groups
by Mary Grabar
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When I teach Barry Goldwater’s 1964 Republican Convention speech to my college students, the few students who know who Barry Goldwater was usually claim that he was a reactionary racist. They’ve learned their lessons well from an educational system that presents any opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Act as ipso facto racism.

Goldwater opposed the Act on constitutional grounds, specifically titles II and VII, which allowed federal regulation of public accommodations and employment. Now the Supreme Court is hearing the case of Ricci v. De Stefano regarding denial of promotion to New Haven firefighters who scored the highest on a test for advancement.

The problem was that of the top 15 scorers, 14 were white and one was Hispanic.

No African-American firefighters qualified for promotion, so the city, after disruption of meetings by protestors, claimed that the 1964 act compelled them to disregard the exam results. So they decided to forego promotions. Plaintiffs don’t question the act, but the use of “intentional discrimination” in adhering to the statute, according to lawyer Peter S. Ferrara.

I do not question this strategy, but do think that much harm has been meted out by the 1964 Act.

How illogical is this? The ACLU and LatinoJustice filed an amicus brief against the high-scoring Hispanic firefighter (and the 14 others), claiming that no one’s rights were violated.

The act has had a chilling effect on employment practices, with employers “voluntarily” going to great lengths to avoid the perception of discrimination by tailoring jobs and offering higher salaries for just such “protected classes.”

Goldwater’s principled resistance to public pressures, like Martin Luther King, Jr.’s March on Washington, helped cost him the election.

It’s not that Goldwater did not work on behalf of equality and integration. He was a member of the NAACP, and as city councilman in Phoenix, he led the struggle to end segregation in the city’s public schools. As a U.S. senator, he hired a black woman as his first staff assistant—long before affirmative action laws. Continued...
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About The Author
Mary Grabar earned her Ph.D. in English from the University of Georgia and teaches in the Atlanta area. She is a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet and published fiction writer. Visit her website and get on her mailing list at marygrabar.com
 
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Reply # 1
Date: May 9, 2009 - 4:59 PM EST
August 4, 1964, issue of National Review
{“Extremism in Defense of Liberty...”

...everybody is poised to jump him, and to misconstrue darkly anything he says.

"Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice, moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." "Justice too long delayed is justice denied." "There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into an abyss of injustice when they experience the blackness of corroding despair." "I have been greatly disappointed with the moderates."

The first of these statements was of course Goldwater's, denounced in the New York Times as a "jumble of high-sounding contradictions," and by Governor Rockefeller as "shocking." The succeeding three, which no verbal taxonomist would distinguish as from a different family, are from a single statement by Martin Luther King, uttered a few months before he was given a hero's welcome at the White House, and named Man of the Year by Time magazine. Quo licet Jovi, the Romans used to say, non licet Bovi — what the gods can get away with, the swine cannot. Dr. King is a god in our society; Goldwater is a pauper. Talk about second-class citizenship!}

http://www.nationalreview.com/flashback/editors200408300851 .asp

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Reply # 2
Date: May 9, 2009 - 1:32 PM EST
Remembering Barry Goldwater
"Partly of Jewish heritage..." Barry Morris Goldwater, one of my three political heroes, was the son of Baron Goldwater (formerly Goldwasser prior to the family's move to the US) - who was fully Jewish. "Partly" makes it sound as if he had a Jewish relative in his past. No, no, he was half-Jewish and in fact, in his autobiography he remarked that when told the golf course he happened to be playing one day was restricted, he's half-Jewish, so he would only play nine holes! He also had a rabbi among the clergy performing his funeral service.

To suggest Barry Goldwater was racist was absurd. I wrote a major paper in graduate school about his relationships with the American Indians, one of America's most suffering minorities. For years Goldwater would fly his own plane in miserable winter condidtions to Indian reservations in order to bring them supplies, typically at his own cost. This was not political grandstanding. This was just Barry Goldwater.

I had the great honor of interviewing Senator Goldwater in his Arizona home in 1995 - three years prior to his passing and he was still sharp, alert and full of both good humor and phenomenal stories. His story should be one taught in schools as an American hero who put country above party and stood his ground on his principles.

"Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice, and moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." - Barry Morris Goldwater.
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