Why Vote Against Equal Rights For Women?

“Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” That’s pretty simple and quite limited. Nothing about how we have to act in our personal lives. Just a clear statement that our governments cannot discriminate against women or men.

But it’s been controversial for a century, and still is not the law of our land. Most Republicans hate this idea.

This amendment to the US Constitution was just approved by the Illinois legislature. The Senate approved the measure 43-12. Then the House approved 72-45, making Illinois the 37th state to ratify the ERA.

Here’s how the voting went in the Senate: Democrats supported it unanimously, Republicans voted against it 12 to 8. In the House, 62 Democrats and 10 Republicans voted yes, 5 Democrats and 40 Republicans voted no. In committee hearings, Republicans were nearly unanimously opposed – one “yes” vote in the Senate Executive Committee, none in the House Human Services Committee.

Republicans opposed to the ERA talked about toilets in the 1970s, and talk about abortion today. Some Illinois Republican arguments against the ERA are lies, such as Rep. Peter Breen’s assertion: “The only alleged benefit ... that I’ve heard about ... is that it will expand taxpayer funding of abortions. They have no other thing they want to do.” Or the claim by the Illinois Family Institute that it’s about “eradicating sex as a legitimate characteristic on which to base reasonable distinctions.” Denial of equal rights is not “reasonable”.

Some Republicans can’t even imagine equality. Rep. Jeanne Ives doesn’t believe it’s possible: “The fact of the matter is that women will not be protected until men decide to protect them and decide to stop the sexual harassment decide to stop the domestic abuse, decide to stop the sex trafficking, decide in the work places when they are in charge that they will protect the women under their charge.” This is a very different view of how the state should treat gender. Men will decide when and if they wish to “protect” women who are “in their charge”.

Republicans were not forced to vote against the ERA to show Party loyalty. Rep. Steve Andersson said, “I’m glad that the common sense, the recognition that women deserve and are entitled to the same protections as men won the day. What we’re going to do is raise the level of all ships. Men, women, everyone does better because of this.”

I would not have known how my own representative to the Illinois Legislature, C.D. Davidsmeyer, voted on the ERA, so I did some internet research. Davidsmeyer’s home page explains in detail his objections to the budget bill that had just been passed. There’s another big story headlined, “Davidsmeyer’s Back Pay Legislation Passes House”. Some undeserved back-patting here: Davidsmeyer was one of about 50 co-sponsors, a follower, not a leader. Other items he thinks are important to communicate to his constituents: an announcement about Opportunity Zones in our district and a report of his photo-op with FFA students.

Not a word about the ERA. Davidsmeyer voted “no”.

The website of the Illinois General Assembly shows that the ERA bill was filed back in February 2017, passed the Illinois Senate this April, and the bill “Arrived in House” on April 11. Over the next couple of weeks, 41 members of the House signed on as co-sponsors. Davidsmeyer had plenty of time to think about his vote.

Republicans have not always made a special point to be hostile to women. From 1923 to 1990, there were more Republican than Democratic women in the Illinois House every term but 1957-1964. The number of Republican women has fallen since the 1990s, while the number of Democratic women has doubled, lately reaching 3 times the Republican total.

Why did Rep. Davidsmeyer decide to vote no?

He wasn’t yet born when discrimination against women became a national issue in the 1960s, or when the ERA was proposed, ratified quickly by 34 states, then stalled during the 1970s. His generation of men and women, which includes my children, has enjoyed more gender equality than any in American history. The reduction of inequality was a direct result of decades of struggle against the forces of “no”, and the ERA was central to that struggle. Every day we still see the traumas of inequality in the news, partly because the ERA is still not the law of the land. Is Davidsmeyer okay with that? Does he agree with Ives that “women will not be protected until men decide to protect them,” and he’s not going to be one of those men?

Does he think it’s okay when “Equality of rights under the law” are “denied or abridged by the United States or by any State”? Why is that the Illinois Republican consensus?

Doesn’t he have something to say about his vote on an amendment to the US Constitution? Why isn’t he saying it in public?

I think the whole issue makes him uncomfortable. His vote against treating women equally makes me uncomfortable.

Steve Hochstadt

Jacksonville IL

Published in the Jacksonville Journal-Courier, June 5, 2018

Elections Are the Best Surveys

Many Americans are concerned about the apparent increase in open expression of racist attitudes since Donald Trump, who has made racist remarks for his entire public career, became the Republican nominee for President. Suddenly white supremacy is no longer a taboo in public. “Trump has unquestionably brought people to our ideas,” said Richard Spencer, the white-nationalist leader.

But less attention has been given to an equally noteworthy opposite trend: what Sean McElwee calls the rising racial liberalism of white Democrats. The proportion of white Democrats who attributed racial inequality to systematic discrimination remained steady for 30 years at below 50%, while more believed inequality was due to blacks’ own behavior. That changed suddenly during the Obama Presidency, and the latest surveys show a striking reversal: 54% say inequality is due to discrimination, while only 28% blame the actions of minorities themselves.

One of the defining partisan differences among voters is that Republicans continue to blame minorities for inequality. A series of Pew surveys, which confirm the shift in liberal beliefs, also show that 75% of Republicans and 79% of conservative Republicans say “blacks who can’t get ahead are mostly responsible for their own condition”. Republicans are less likely than they were 20 years ago to see discrimination as a cause for blacks’ inability to “get ahead”. That is surprising, since younger Americans are more likely to blame discrimination than older ones. Education also plays a significant role: the more educated one is, the more likely to see discrimination as the cause for inequality.

What is happening to racial attitudes in America? McElwee directly compared the responses of white Democrats who had been interviewed in 2011 and in 2016. The shift is startling over such a short time: many gave different answers to questions about whether blacks should just try harder and about the long-term effects of slavery and discrimination. Twice as many agreed in 2016 that “Over the past few years, black people have gotten less than they deserve.” While all age groupings of white Democrats moved away from blaming blacks for inequality, the movement was much stronger among those under 30.

Such surveys help us to understand the beliefs of the American public, but they don’t count. What counts is the special kind of survey called voting, which determines who populates American governments and what policies they enact. Recent primary elections, leading up to the midterms in November 2018, show how these changing partisan attitudes play out in the voting booth.

Stacey Abrams, who won the Democratic primary for Georgia governor, became the first black woman nominated by a major party for governor in any state. She soundly defeated Stacey Evans, a white woman, all across Georgia, including in Forsyth County, a nearly completely white district with a long history of violent racism. Former Dallas County Sheriff Lupe Valdez won the Democratic primary for Texas governor, becoming the first Latina woman, as well as the first acknowledged lesbian, to win a major party gubernatorial nomination there. In Illinois, a black woman, Lauren Underwood, won more votes than the six white men in her Congressional primary combined.

This growing racial liberalism among Democrats is matched by increasing gender liberalism. The Democratic nominations in Georgia for both governor and lieutenant governor were contested by two women. The three races for the Democratic nomination for the House of Representatives in which women were candidates were all won by the women. Up to now, Democratic women have been candidates in about half of the 149 Congressional districts that have had primaries. In 65 districts, there was at least one woman and one man in the race with no incumbent, and women were the top vote-getters in 47.

Republicans are not only much less sympathetic to blacks, they are less interested in women holding office. The battle for Georgia governor is symbolic: while two Democratic women competed, the Republican primary featured five men. Across the country, women and men competed in only 14 Republican Congressional primaries with no incumbent, and men won 11.

What will happen when Democratic women, white and non-white, compete against Republican white men in November? Will these newly diverse candidates mobilize new voters? Are independent voters leaning more toward minority and female candidates like Democrats or away from them like Republicans?

Is America heading toward greater equality or back to the past? November will tell.

Steve Hochstadt

Jacksonville IL

Published in the Jacksonville Journal-Courier, May 29, 2018

Why Do Some People Hate College?

I went to a college graduation on Sunday. Graduations are festive events, when everybody dresses up, smiles a lot, and congratulates everyone else. They are called “Commencements” because the ceremony represents the beginning of a new life as an educated person.

A college education in America is expensive, nearly $100,000 for students at public universities in their home states and over $200,000 at smaller private colleges. But as an investment, that expensive education is clearly worth it. College graduates earn on average nearly twice what those with only a high school diploma earn, which adds up to over $1 million in lifetime wages. The unemployment rate for college graduates is about one-third that of high school graduates.

Some Americans sneer at the idea that a college degree is worth anything. They do not argue with these numbers. Instead they criticize the entire American higher education system as fraudulent brain-washing. I doubt that these critics of American universities and colleges have any idea what actually happens on college campuses.

The distrust of political conservatives for intellectuals and higher education has been a feature of our politics for half a century. Before that conservatives had wielded their political power to shape education in their image, to prevent it from challenging the myths which supported their ideology. When I went to school and college in the 1960s, our lessons and instructors supported the status quo. The subject of history, the most politically dangerous of all disciplines, was written and taught to prevent questioning of political traditions.

James Loewen, and many others, have shown how conservative myths dominated history textbooks which were used then in high schools and universities. Slavery, the antecedent of Jim Crow discrimination, was transformed into a humanitarian effort by well-meaning whites to care for inferior blacks, who were happy in their bondage. Women were portrayed as best realizing their limited potential as home-bound caregivers. They, too, were pleased with their limitations. White men taught these myths, assigned textbooks written by white men, in courses selected and organized by white men, and made sure that when one white man retired, another one was found to take his place.

The few men and women who challenged these ideas and the structure that had created and propagated them had been struck down with the powers of the state during the lengthy postwar period of political repression, lasting long after Joseph McCarthy had been repudiated.

The protests of the 1960s targeted not only segregation and the Vietnam War, but also conservative power in American higher education, initiating a fundamental transformation of both knowledge and teaching that have alarmed conservatives.

American conservatives have been infuriated by the gradual dismantling of that whole system since then. The stories that confirmed their historical worldview and their contemporary politics were shown to be whitewash. African Americans and women demonstrated with their bodies that they were not happy with a rigidly subordinated place. The composition of history departments changed and so did their teachings. Studies of race and gender by a gradually diversifying faculty revealed uncomfortable truths about white supremacy and male domination in American history.

Crude conservatives like Wayne LaPierre say this all represents the hostile takeover of our universities by communists. The Heartland Institute, ostensibly embodying loftier intellectual aims, says that college is useless: their “policy advisor for education” Teresa Mull mocks today’s graduates as “ignorant and inept”, because “most college courses . . . are a waste of time.” Revealing what really bothers American conservatives, the example of “brainwashing” she provides concerns teaching about racism.

I don’t know how much experience such people have on American campuses. Their claims are not descriptions, but propaganda in the conservative war against knowledge they don’t like. The majority of conservatives who say that American higher education damages the nation really mean that it damages the propagation of their myths about American racial history, about the proper roles of men and women, about the effects of human society on the natural environment.

Decades of conservative attacks on higher education have succeeded in creating an image of the college teacher as radical, elitist, unpatriotic, and intellectually dictatorial. The students who marched in their robes across the Illinois College campus Sunday, and tens of thousands of students marching across America, know better. They know that no course and no professor is perfect. They know about the flaws and achievements of institutions. But they know that they have been challenged, not brainwashed, encouraged, not repressed, coached and tutored and prepared for useful lives. They say the word “professor” with respect.

The real students I met are thrilled to graduate, because they appreciate how their college years and college teachers have transformed them. They are wiser, more knowledgeable, more skilled, more expressive, and more confident. They know themselves better – what they are good at; what they want; how to use their personal skills to achieve their goals.

At Commencement they’re doubly happy – happy to be done and happy for what they have gained. Good for them and good for us all.

Steve Hochstadt

Jacksonville IL

Published in the Jacksonville Journal-Courier, May 15, 2018