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Race Relations
Women’s Rights
- Equal Pay for Equal Work: Addresses discriminatory salary differences that exist between certain groups.
The Fair Pay Act of 1999 would provide equal wages and benefits for work of equivalent value.
- ‘Glass Ceiling’: Term was popularized in a 1986 Wall Street Journal article describing the invisible barriers (usually prejudice) that women and minorities face as they move up the corporate hierarchy.
- Domestic Violence: At the heart of the Domestic Violence Act of 1995 is the protection order.
It names the person who is abusive and states what behavior is illegal under the order. The Family Law Act 1996 provides for a single set of civil remedies to deal with domestic violence.
Minority Rights
- Hate Crimes: Congress defines as a crime in which the defendant intentionally selects a victim because of the actual or perceived race, color, national origin, ethnicity, gender, disability or sexual orientation of that person.
- Affirmative Action: Minority applicants are preferentially hired to make up for past discrimination.
The equivalent negative term is ‘Reverse Discrimination’.
Candidates discuss whether ‘preference’ implies a fixed ‘quota’.
- Racial Profiling: Also known as ‘Driving While Black’.
Law enforcement practice of using race to decide which motorists to stop.
- Redlining: Practice where banks draw lines around certain low income and minority neighborhoods.
The banks then refuse to lend to those neighborhoods.
- Bilingual education: Government requirement that U.S. public schools teach children in their native languages.
Since 1974, all schools that accept federal funding must provide special language programs.
Disabled Rights
- Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) & Handicapped Access (see Health Care)
- Mental Illness Discrimination (see Health Care)
Other Civil Rights Issues
- Flag-Burning Amendment
- Confederate Flag in Public Places
- Gambling, Prostitution, Pornography, & ‘victimless crimes’
- Funding for NEA
- Right to Privacy (see Technology)
Amendment I to the US Constitution
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.... (1791)
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