The pursuit of equality in America has been an aggressive undertaking which has produced impartial rights indiscriminate of race or gender. Organized efforts for uniform rights originated in the mid-1800’s and have been successful in appealing to the true nature of the American dream- ubiquitous and identical opportunities that are available to any American. Progress toward rights for (then) African Americans began with President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and eventually generated government sanctions prohibiting any form of discrimination based on race. 1893 marked a crucial development toward women’s rights when Colorado became the first state to allow women to vote. Since then, the disparity in afforded possibilities and
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Effectively making the enslavement of African Americans illegal, President Lincoln was the first major contributor to race equality. Thirty years later, the fourteenth amendment to the constitution was enacted defining citizenship and classifying African Americans as, justly, Americans. The fifteenth amendment soon followed, giving black Americans the right to vote. The segregation that followed began to be delineated by Brown v. Board of Education which declared segregation in schools unconstitutional. The ruling on this decision snowballed into a considerable amount of similar legislation and, most notably, the Civil Rights Acts signed by Lendon B. Johnson which prohibited “discrimination of all kinds based on race, color, religion, or national origin.” The constitutionality of affirmative action was upheld by the Regents of the University of California v Bakke ruling in 1978 which solidified the guarantee that businesses and institutions would be prohibited from extending opportunities of anything but equal value based on the merit of race. It would be remiss to neglect mentioning that these measures ensure that only opportunity under the oversight of regulation remains equal in opportunity. Even though the American government has implemented as many discriminatory safeguards as are constitutionally aligned in every possible setting (workplace, institutions, schools, political office, etc.), discrimination still occurs. However, the magnitude of equal opportunities available exponentially outnumbers the unequal
Effectively making the enslavement of African Americans illegal, President Lincoln was the first major contributor to race equality. Thirty years later, the fourteenth amendment to the constitution was enacted defining citizenship and classifying African Americans as, justly, Americans. The fifteenth amendment soon followed, giving black Americans the right to vote. The segregation that followed began to be delineated by Brown v. Board of Education which declared segregation in schools unconstitutional. The ruling on this decision snowballed into a considerable amount of similar legislation and, most notably, the Civil Rights Acts signed by Lendon B. Johnson which prohibited “discrimination of all kinds based on race, color, religion, or national origin.” The constitutionality of affirmative action was upheld by the Regents of the University of California v Bakke ruling in 1978 which solidified the guarantee that businesses and institutions would be prohibited from extending opportunities of anything but equal value based on the merit of race. It would be remiss to neglect mentioning that these measures ensure that only opportunity under the oversight of regulation remains equal in opportunity. Even though the American government has implemented as many discriminatory safeguards as are constitutionally aligned in every possible setting (workplace, institutions, schools, political office, etc.), discrimination still occurs. However, the magnitude of equal opportunities available exponentially outnumbers the unequal