Singing along in Selma

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were in Selma, Alabama, today to speak at black churches. The occasion was the forty-second anniversary of Bloody Sunday, the day hundreds of civil rights protesters were attacked by police with bullwhips and billy clubs as they attempted to march in defiance of Alabama Governor George Wallace's ban on protest marches.

Both Senator Clinton and Senator Obama sounded a little awkward as they forced the cadences of the pulpit into their speech patterns. Senator Obama was better at it. Senator Clinton looked heavily coached, like a drama student struggling to please a director who has finally given up and just shown her how to do it.

She's from Park Ridge. She can't say things like "a body does get tired." It makes her sound like an understudy in Maine Township East High School's production of "Show Boat."

Senator Obama told a long and convoluted story about his background to prove that he wouldn't have been born if not for the marchers in Selma, and the crowd appeared to eat it up.

The most surprising thing in the speeches was the huge ovation Senator Obama received when he took a page from Bill Cosby's act and called on African-American parents to teach their kids different values. He called on parents to "turn off the television set and put away the Game Boy and make sure that you're talking to your teacher and that we get over the anti-intellectualism that exists in some of our communities where if you conjugate your verbs and if you read a book that somehow means you are acting white."

The congregation roared with approval. They applauded. They cheered.

Bill Cosby didn't get that reception.

Maybe the Obama campaign papered the house with supporters.

Both Senator Clinton and Senator Obama talked about the groundbreaking, ceiling-shattering nature of their presidential campaigns and gave credit to the civil rights pioneers who made them possible, which reminds me that this is a good time to remind you that the U.S. Constitution has never actually been amended to ban race and gender discrimination.

Civil rights laws in the United States are secured in the Constitution by a judicial interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment that was pulled right out of the air and has no foundation in the actual history of the Fourteenth Amendment.

It's unfinished business that we really ought to attend to.

Until we amend the Constitution to ban race and gender discrimination, civil rights will continue to be at risk every time a Supreme Court justice retires. Rights that are interpreted into the Constitution can be interpreted out of the Constitution.

That's why Senator Ted Kennedy asked Chief Justice nominee John Roberts during his confirmation hearings if he accepts the constitutionality of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1965 Voting Rights Act and the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision. Nobody asked him if he thinks women have the right to vote or if he believes states have the right to permit slavery. Those things were settled with constitutional amendments, so it doesn't matter what he thinks, he can't do anything about it.

A constitutional amendment puts an issue beyond the reach of any court or Congress.

Read more about it in the appendix to The 37th Amendment, "How the First Amendment Came to Protect Topless Dancing," or read a much shorter version in this 2002 article, "A Retirement Plan for Sandra Day O'Connor."


Copyright 2007

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