Battle for civil rights, equal opportunity has just begun
By Sen. John Kerry and Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick

Together we celebrate the recent 40th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, the culmination of a decades-long struggle against segregation and discrimination. The Civil Rights Act was signed at the White House, but as Martin Luther King understood, in truth, it “was ... written in the streets” of America. It was written by freedom fighters, who climbed aboard buses and marched into the blast of a fire hose and the bark of a dog without ever resorting to violence.

The children and grandchildren of the 1960s are now doctors and lawyers, teachers and entrepreneurs, lawmakers and peacekeepers. They have gone from their parents’ workplaces at lunch counters to the Supreme Court, from the backseat of buses to the Space Shuttle. Yet as far as our country has come in breaking down barriers, we still have farther to go.

Unfortunately, the current administration does not share our vision of how we turn hope for an even brighter future into opportunity. Forty years after the civil rights movement, George W. Bush wants African-American families to quietly accept unemployment rates above the national average and health care that is not affordable or available.

Bush says this is the best economy of our lifetime. He and Vice President Dick Cheney say this is the best we can do. They have even called us pessimists for pointing out where we are failing middle-class families. Well, we believe the most pessimistic thing you can do is tell African-American families that we cannot do better. We can, and we will.

We have yet to truly fulfill our commitment to education. If President Bush had fully funded No Child Left Behind, Detroit’s schools could hire nearly another 4,000 teachers. College graduates will earn $900,000 more than high school graduates over a career, and college is one of the best paths to the middle class. But under Bush, we are squeezing our children into classrooms without enough teachers and expecting them to learn at their best.

Almost a half-century after the Supreme Court declared separate but equal to be unconstitutional, more African-American men are in prison than in college; they make up four percent of the university population, and more than 40 percent of the prison population. Yet President Bush still opposes efforts such as the University of Michigan’s admissions policy to encourage diversity among graduate and undergraduate students.

We have yet to truly fulfill our commitment to opportunity. Today, one in 10 African-Americans cannot find work, twice the rate for whites. The unemployment rate in Michigan has doubled in the last three years. And American workers in Michigan are competing against workers in other countries where employers do not recognize the right of workers to bargain collectively and where employers exploit workers and their basic human rights, sometimes resorting to violence and intimidation.

We can start creating opportunity by shutting down the loopholes that use your tax dollars to subsidize corporations sending jobs overseas. We can fight for labor and environment protections in every trade agreement.

And we have yet to truly fulfill our commitment to civil rights. Under President Bush and Attorney General John Ashcroft, the Justice Department’s civil rights division has been effectively closed. George Bush has nominated some of the most radical, right-wing judges that our country has ever seen.

And while the Senate has finally passed comprehensive hate crimes legislation, President Bush has yet to support the legislation, let alone provide the leadership necessary to ensure that it becomes law.

President Lyndon Johnson once said discrimination was not a “Negro problem, or a Southern problem, or a Northern problem.” It was an American problem. And, like the civil rights movement, we require an American solution. This year we must renew our struggle for civil rights, and we must renew it by building a stronger America together.

As we remember the Civil Rights Act, let us commit ourselves to a new American solution, one firmly rooted in the true meaning of “equality.” Let us commit ourselves to overcoming the obstacles that we face and working together toward the Constitution’s promise of a more perfect union.

Sen. John Kerry is the Democratic presidential nominee, and Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, D-Detroit, represents Michigan’s 13th Congressional District. Send letters to [email protected].