![\"Color](\"http:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/color-america.jpg\")
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What a rainbow of a week it\u2019s been in the colorblind United States. Reds, blues, yellows, greens and purples streaked the skies Wednesday, following the 5-4 Supreme Court ruling that struck down the Defense of Marriage Act and kicked back Proposition 8 back to California courts. Homosexual men and women were left in tears (as was Jesus, according to New Testament-touting troglodyte Mike Huckabee) as it seemed equality was no longer a lofty, holed ideal but a palpable reality that included them in its rich stitching.<\/p>\n
And yet, as it so often goes in the American struggle for civil rights, the gains we make in one arena are tempered by our willful failure in another. 24 hours before a chorus of cheers reverberated about the imposing columns before the Supreme Court\u2019s halls, a sobering silence cloaked its patrons as they received word that some of the most successful civil rights legislation the United States has ever seen, the Voting Rights Act, had effectively been gutted in yet another 5-4 split decision. <\/p>\n
In his majority opinion, Chief Justice Roberts stated that the United States has \u201cchanged\u201d, and that old formulas for determining which states require preclearance before revising voting laws, procedures or locales are out-of-date, unfair and place an undue, singular burden on certain states whose histories have evolved since 1965 (pay no mind to the fact that typically, a burden becomes \u201cundue\u201d when the costs of a requirement outweigh its benefits, which in this case would be ensuring that the Fifteenth Amendment is adhered to at the local, state and federal level, and that minorities are not prevented from voting based on their race; apparently the pursuit of equality is secondary to the bureaucratic hassles imposed on states with a history of opposing it).<\/p>\n
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Like clockwork, within hours of both rulings, the people began to act. New Jersey constituents moved to override Chris Christie\u2019s veto of gay marriage legislation last fall. John Roberts\u2019 openly gay cousin announced that he would be getting married as Michele Bachmann blubbered for the miserable fate of America\u2019s poor, poor children in loving homosexual households. Acting on the court\u2019s ignoble submission, Texas immediately enacted a voter ID law that had previously \u201cprovided more evidence of discriminatory intent than [the court had] space, or need, to address<\/a>\u201d. It would appear that Justice Roberts has mistaken marked change for impatient waiting.<\/p>\n So yes, the Supreme Court has changed a few things on paper, and those who stand to gain–and lose–the most have responded accordingly and promptly. Culturally, though, that change is a bit more difficult to discern. It\u2019s true that increased pop culture inclusion, decades of dynamic activism around the nation, and an intelligible drift from religion-tinted takes on social issues have all contributed greatly to the success of the American LGBT movement. And yet, as the supposedly undaunted United States takes a meek, calculated step toward marriage equality, we are blind to the success of a bold and necessary initiative toward more basic equality–and our own history. And with the Supreme Court\u2019s recent ruling on the Voting Rights Act, we only stand to undermine one and repeat the other. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n The truth, as much as the Roberts majority might like to hide from its halls, is that the United States has yet to shake its sharp color vision, and the court\u2019s recent actions will only stoke it that much further. If 2012\u2018s influx of voter suppression efforts, significant disparities in health, wealth and incarceration rates based purely on race aren\u2019t demonstrative enough, a simple press of a TV’s \u201con\u201d button or cruise through the web might be informative. In her dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg cited a 2011 instance<\/a>–among many other similar incidents–where an Alabama state senator referred to black people as aborigines. Last week, opinion was hotly divided (and largely by race) on Miley Cyrus\u2019 culturally insensitive use <\/a>of black people as props in her latest music video. There were actually debates regarding Paula Deen\u2019s racism<\/a> (re: asking an employee to design a wedding for her brother a la \u201cGone With The Wind\u201d, featuring \u201ca bunch of [tap dancing] little nigger\u201d servers in bow ties). And as the prosecution began to make its case this week during the George Zimmerman trial, pundits on and offline spent an alarming amount of time discussing not the facts of Rachel Jeantel\u2019s testimony and how they might advance the case, but rather how she might be misunderstood by her white jurors. Some more unsavory characters were quick to pin Jeantel as \u201cPrecious\u201d, others said they saw visions of black civil rights advocates in Jeantel\u2019s eyes, and others still bickered back and forth<\/a> on who understood–and misunderstood–Jeantel more, again the degree of understanding corresponded with your skin color. Colorblind? Hardly. Color-confused? Certainly.<\/p>\n The point is that when it comes to equality, you can\u2019t have it both ways. You can\u2019t look at the American people and strike down parts of a law that prevented millions from being treated as equal under the law while overturning another one that ensured it. The United States has finally begun to see in rainbows; if we want to truly eradicate black and white from that spectrum, we must first acknowledge that those divisions still exist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What a rainbow of a week it\u2019s been in the colorblind United States. Reds, blues, yellows, greens and purples streaked the skies Wednesday, following the 5-4 Supreme Court ruling that struck down the Defense of Marriage Act and kicked back Proposition 8 back to California courts. Homosexual men and women were left in tears (as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":549,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[259],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n![\"paula-deen\"](\"http:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/paula-deen.jpg\")
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