Pornography and Civil Rights: A New Day for Women's Equality

the courts or in the streets. Each confrontation became more

costly, both to the civil-rights activists and to the white-su-

premacist society they were fighting. Each confrontation

forced people throughout the society to ask at least these two

fundamental questions of power and dignity: Who is getting hurt

The Meaning of Civil Rights

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and why? By attacking de jure segregation on every front, however dangerous or difficult, the civil-rights activists made

the cost of maintaining the racial status quo higher and higher.

Eventually it became too high. The Civil Rights Act of 1964

opened up public accommodations, first in the South, later

everywhere, to Black people. The Voting Rights Act of 1965

opened up the voting booths.

The high cost of maintaining the status quo forced change;

and so did the increasing moral authority of the protesters.

They risked everything. Their bravery indisputably expressed the eloquence of their humanity to a nation that had denied the very existence of that humanity. Each assertion of

rights enhanced the persuasive power of those who demanded equality. The moral authority of the protesters eventually exceeded the moral authority of the state that sought to crush

them. They won access to public accommodations and to the

voting booth; and they won the respect of a nation that had

hated them. De jure segregation no longer set the standard for

the contemptuous disregard of the rights of Black people; instead, Black people set the human standard for courage.

Principles:

1. Confront power by challenging it where it is strongest,

meanest, and most entrenched. (For instance, white supremacy was strongest in the legally segregated South; meanest in the streets, including in public accommodations; and most entrenched in the courts. ) 2. Intensifying and escalating social conflict leads to social

change.

3. The status quo must become too costly for the dominant

society to bear.

4. The moral authority of those confronting entrenched

power can be a force for change.

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Pornography and Civil Rights

Our contemporary understanding of civil rights—what they

are, what they mean—comes out of the Black experience: ’the

human rights of Black people—their rights of citizenship and

personhood—were violated in de jure and de facto systems of

segregation. Civil-rights legislation grew out of the specific

configurations of Black exclusion from society, dignity, and

rights. Other groups were also af orded legal protection from

discrimination. Where the pat erns of discrimination experienced by those groups were analogous to pat erns of Black exclusion under segregation, civil-rights laws remedied longstanding, systematic deprivations. For instance, the disabled, now protected under civil-rights legislation, have a right of

equal access to public schooling and public accommodations.

The effort to stop racial discrimination in jobs, hiring practices,