The New Civil Rights By Yoshino Summary

Our Founding Founders established the federal government with three distinct branches, each with powers over the other in order to have a proper checks and balances to ensure fairness across the board. The U.S. Constitution outlines the powers and responsibilities of the three branches of government and is a critical document for the federal government. Important laws and documents such as The Bill of Rights, The US Civil Rights Act and The Freedom of Information Act (FoIA) are managed by our Constitution. Below we will discuss three subjects which set up a diverse broad range of viewpoints that are essential in our democracy.

Millions of people varying in color, religion, sex, sexual preferences, and socioeconomic status share the earth that we live on. Somehow within all that variation people think that they are able to interpret and label what is normal and abnormal. How many are considered “normal” and why? Is the child born with 6 fingers on one hand instead of 5 any less normal then the 5 fingered child? Why is preferring to sit in the dark and go on long meandering walks enough to have you labeled unfit to raise children as Sylvie was in the movie Housekeeping? Webster’s dictionary defines normal as the ability to conform to a particular standard or desired pattern. People who abide by the laws and social norms are normal, and those who don’t are abnormal.

"If the fires of freedom and civil liberties burn low in other lands, they must be made brighter in our own. If in other lands the press and books and literature of all kinds are censored, we must redouble our efforts here to keep them free. If in other lands the eternal truths of the past are threatened by intolerance, we must provide a safe place for their perpetuation." Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1938 (Isaacs 66)

Civil Liberties and Civil Rights are two terms that are often used interchangeably in America. Since the founding of our nation there has always been the debate of the limit of government and what rights were guaranteed to each individual. Many of the architects of our government feared that national government could one day become too powerful and begin to infringe on the individual rights of the citizens. As a result, a Bill of Rights was added to our constitution. The Bill of Rights serves as a guide of what the government cannot do. Civil Liberties simply establish precedent on what rights the United States government cannot abridge on. Civil Rights, on the other hand applies to the rights of individuals. Over the history of our nation the question of civil rights has found itself becoming a pillar of our legal system and has been very instrumental in our quest to become a “more perfect union”. In recent history one civil liberty that has caused a continual controversial debate is the second amendment, in addition to how it applies to gun control measures that are being proposed in order to decrease the level of mass shootings. The second amendment clearly defines the intention of individuals to have the right to bear arms. In order to understand why gun control advocates have failed to secure effective gun control legislation, we must explore the reasoning why the second amendment is interpreted the way it is and should Americans be allowed to own guns?

Jason A. Peterson, Full court press: Mississippi State University, the press, the battle to integrate college basketball (Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi, 2015), entire book.

On July 28th, 2014, a new civil rights movement was declare - a movement for the Aryan race and against all those who defied it.

Every day parents send their children to school, assuming they will be safe. Although many are safe, there are also many that are bullied on a daily basis. In reviewing the definition of the word “bullied,” it fundamentally is unwanted aggressive or harmful behavior with a perceived power imbalance that is directed onto those individuals that are weaker to intimidate them to gain something they want (www.stopbullying.com, 2012).

Imagine four teenagers: Craig, Lucy, David, and Gina. Really think about their appearances and personalities. I’m going to say that you imagined all of them as heterosexual, cisgender, white, average-sized boys and girls. If you did, it’s okay. It’s our brain's default. It’s what is “normal”. What if I said that Craig was gay? What if I said Gina was African-American? Or that David used to be Diana? And Lucy was Buddhist? Most minds of our generation wouldn’t care. It wouldn’t harbor negative feelings now that these people have “breached” if you will, the societies perception of normal. America’s gift to our generation is acceptance.

The issue is, the word “normal” carries an implicit value judgment: it says, “typical or common, and therefore good, satisfactory, or desirable.” Well, who doesn’t want to be desirable? But in doing so, you are

Bullying starts off as an act of survival. Bullying is instilled in the social, economic and education realms as the capitalist society unconsciously tells us that success and wealth go hand in hand (Donegan, 2012). This idea has been inculcated as a survival tactic from a very young age. For instance, as soon as a child enters school, he or she is taught to be the best they can be. Later, this idea develops into a competition to get ahead to the point that students have to resort to violence to be above the rest (Donegan, 2012) .

Normalcy functions in hegemonic ways, some of which will be discussed in this post. Prior to the use of the term norm however, an unattainable “ideal” was used for people to compare themselves to and this ideal was striving for perfection. During the nineteenth century the concept of “norm” entered in European languages and was formed in relation to the ideology of statistics in which a population can be normed (Davis, pp. 3)

The purpose of having a normal and abnormal has been highly debated among anthropologists and psychologists alike. Anthropologist Ruth Benedict states that normality is the general way a culture lives and abnormality is simply a deviance from these patterns (Benedict: 1934 1). An instance of this would be the controversial topic of homosexuality, Benedict studied many cultures who had differing viewpoints on homosexuality, with one giving homosexuals a higher ranking and another viewing them as deplorable, research such as these, verify the anthropologists notion that a universal code of ethics is wrong, what is considered abnormal in one society can often be praised in another. That being said, the cause for such inconsistencies in belief systems often lies with the cultures history. Every community creates a set of social rules or etiquette for itself based on what is viewed as normal and abnormal, these rules are often enforced by the people

2. Social deviance can be simply defined as any violation of social norms and laws, be it formal or informal (Conley, 2011). These transgressions may include minor acts such as violation of personal space, playing loud music or picking one’s nose publicly. It also includes major acts of crime such as theft, murder, rape, or assault. One of the currently hot topics regarding social deviance is the society’s acceptance towards gay people, especially those who went for surgery and became transgender. Today, LGBT rights are being established and strengthened step by step. However, not so long ago, gay people were usually glared at especially when they chose to exhibit their cross-dressing or their affairs publicly. Although most of these people

Bullying is one of America’s largest current problems involving children and teens, it is serious, destructive, and harmful and desperately needs to stop. Bullying is not secluded to one area of America, it is alive in many homes and schools. Bullies play an enormous role in causing their peers to injure themselves, become mentally unstable, struggle with depression, and potentially commit suicide. Many encounters with bullies are kept silent, which can be extremely dangerous to the victim. There are many different circumstances that play a role in causing a kid to bully another kid. There are also many solutions that desperately need to be placed in action to help fix the awful situation of bullying. It is dangerous and has the ability to devour many harmless lives.

Abnormal behavior depends on the context and norm in the society we live and of what constitutes our behavior as normal or abnormal. Abnormal behavior can be broken down into cognitive and emotional behavior. Because of the diverse cultures, one’s behavior can be perceived as normal or of an abnormal standard which is outside the parameters of what is conventional in society. Therefore normal behavior can be various amongst different cultures and society. According to Kleinman, (1988) if one behaves in a certain way which is outside the culture norms it can be said to be portraying abnormal behavior because it invades the rules that are set in a culture for that which is of an acceptable behavior. Normality and abnormality