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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsCivility Has Its Limits
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/has-american-politics-hit-rock-bottom/572452/Civility Has Its Limits
The conflict over Brett Kavanaughs nomination centered not on tribalism, but on a lack of justice.
6:00 AM ET
Peter Beinart
Professor of journalism at the City University of New York
snip//
...there is no equivalence between the bigotry faced by men accused of sexual assault and the bigotry faced by women who suffer it. Theres no equivalence, because men wield far more power. If you dont think that matters, try imagining Kavanaugh getting confirmed by a Senate composed of 79 women.
The struggle over Kavanaugh was, at its core, a struggle between people who want gender relations to change and people who want them to remain the same. And throughout American history, whenever oppressed groups and their supporters have agitated for change, respectable moderates have warned that they were fomenting incivility and division. In April 1963, seven white Alabama ministers and one rabbi wrote a letter to Martin Luther King Jr.. The letter articulated no position on segregation and the right to vote. It assumed, instead, a moral equivalence between blacks who wanted race relations to change and whites who wanted them to remain the same. Both sides held honest convictions in racial matters. Both our white and Negro citizenry should observe the principles of law and order and common sense.
The real danger, the authors claimed, was friction and unrest. Averting it required forbearance and restraint on both sides. King, whose Birmingham campaign was titled Project Cfor confrontationwas purposefully fomenting such friction and unrest through marches, sit-ins, and boycotts. While technically peaceful, the ministers and rabbi warned, the extreme measures adopted by King and his supporters incite to hatred and violence.
In his response, written from jail, King argued that the white clergymen were mistaking symptom for disease. The problem wasnt friction and unrest between Birminghams two tribes. It was centuries of oppression, which there was no frictionless way to overcome. I am not afraid of the word tension, King explained. We must see the need of having nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men to rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.
Even as Bull Connors men savagely beat black protesters in the streets, King recognized that Birmingham was not hitting rock bottom. It was rising from an almost century-long nadir in which white supremacyno matter how murderouswas barely even a subject of political controversy, in which black powerlessness was the foundation on which comity between two of Americas white-dominated political parties rested.
The problem that the Kavanaugh struggle laid bare is not unvarnished tribalism. The problem is that women who allege abuse by men still often face male-dominated institutions that do not thoroughly and honestly investigate their claims. That problem is not new; it is very old. What is new is that this injustice now sparks bitter partisan conflict and upends long-standing courtesies. Rape survivors yell at politicians in the Senate halls. The varnishthe attractive, glossy coating that protected male oppression of womenis coming off. Brooks, Collins, and Flake may decry the tension this exposes. But, as King understood, the dark depths of prejudice cant be overcome any other way.
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