Last week in class we broke into groups and pretend like we were at a convention in the 1800s deciding what to do about slavery. While all of the answers ranged in concept they were all rooted within legislation. The entire class suggested legislative approaches to solving solving slavery. I have been reflecting on this and the power, or lack of power, legislation has in changing culture.
At the start of the semester in the Idea of Race we saw that the concept of race was simultaneously created and reenforced by the notion of slavery. The idea of race were notions developed by the top European intellectuals of the enlightenment age. These ideas were then turned into legislation and have lasting impacts to today. The slave trade was a legally regulated industry. Slavery was created and regulated through legistion and untltently destroyed by legistion.
However reversing legistion is not as powerful as we hope it is. Laws have ramifications that can not be as easily undone as it was created. While slavery was ultimelty defeated through legislation, legislation also continued the oppression and mistreatment of African Americans.
Which brings us to how do we resolve something with such legal and cultural roots? We cannot go back in time and change what has happened in the past. All we can is hope to make better laws that can counter act the previous laws.
Rachel Farley
I find your question about the power and usefulness of legislation to be interesting. I think to fully understand the history of Civil Rights in the United States, we have to grapple with the limitations of fighting for progress through the normal order of the legislative process. Legislation is a majoritarian maneuver, meaning that it requires the issue to be popular enough that legislators are willing to get behind it. In the case of Civil Rights, many of the issues are not necessarily widely popular, which is where protest and social activism comes in. Acts of social activism offer the ability to raise issues into the public view and affect change, despite the fact that it may not be legislatively popular.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment! I love the way you describe legislation as a majoritarian maneuver and that is requires the issue to become popular enough that legislators are willing to get behind it. I think that is the key to social activism and change today.
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