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| Chapter 4: Civil Liberties and Civil Rights |
| Questions for Discussion and Thought |
Civil Liberties |
| 1. How much free speech do you think we should allow in the United States? Would you want a white racist to give a speech on your campus? A member of the freemen’s militia? A neo-Nazi? An African American racist? |
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| 2. List three provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act. Do you think that these provisions are necessary to ensure our safety, or are they a threat to our civil liberties? |
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| 3. Most of the democratic countries of the world have abolished capital punishment. Why do you think the United States still uses execution? If other countries had our crime rate, do you think they would want capital punishment? A Texas legislator recently introduced a bill allowing ten-year-olds to be executed. List arguments for and against capital punishment for juveniles. Should we draw the line according to age or to severity of crime? |
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Civil Rights |
| 4. Some white males today claim that “reverse discrimination” has kept them from getting jobs for which they were qualified. Yet, when ABC’s PrimeTime Live (“The Fairer Sex,” 10/7/93) sent both a man and a woman to apply for a job, the man was offered the management position while the woman was offered a job as a receptionist. The reporters also discovered that women were charged more for having a suit cleaned than were men, the man got a tee time at a golf course when the woman was told there were no openings, and the man was quoted a lower price for a new car than the woman. How serious a problem is reverse discrimination? What has been your experience with discrimination? |
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| 5. The college admissions lawsuits have brought out another form of discrimination against Asians and Asian Americans who have been restricted entry because of a quota system at some highly ranked schools. Substitute “Jews” for “Asians” and “Asian Americans” and you replicate a policy that was common in many universities only a few decades ago. Why have these two groups been restricted entry? Should universities try to build their student bodies on the basis of proportionate representation? Does that mean that if 10 percent of Americans are of Scandinavian extraction, they should have 10 percent of the slots at competitive schools? Is there ever any basis for schools to discriminate in enrollment? If so, what are legitimate discriminating factors? Age? Standardized test scores? Quality of high school attended? Letters of recommendation? |
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| 6. In Pasadena, California, in 1985, the Armenian American population (about 13,000 out of a population of 130,000) requested that the city council designate them a protected class under Pasadena’s affirmative action policies. The council agreed that Armenians had been subject to discrimination and voted to include, not only them, but any immigrant who had lived in the United States for less than fifteen years. Do you believe immigrants should be entitled to affirmative action protection? All immigrants? If not, which immigrants? |
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