Page 12
August 29, 2018
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O PINION
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Fearing a Return to Second Class Rights
Gravely
concerned about
Supreme Court
y olanda P arker
Supreme
Court nominee
Brett Kavana-
ugh has a histo-
ry of interpret-
ing the law in a
way that serves
the interests of
the powerful over equality and
justice.
Having grown up in the segre-
gated South, I’m acutely aware of
what’s at stake. I’m gravely con-
cerned for what Kavanaugh’s in-
fluence could mean for communi-
ties of color, women, the LGBTQ
community, and others who’ve
fought to advance civil rights in
our country.
For me, this is personal.
I grew up as an Air Force brat.
We were stationed in the South in
the 1950s, when racial discrimina-
tion was deeply pervasive. Children
weren’t protected from discrimina-
tion — not even the daughter, like
me, of an Air Force officer who
spent a career serving his country.
Despite being in a military fami-
ly, I still had to attend segregated
schools outside the Air Force base.
When we were stationed in Bi-
loxi, Miss., girls in my junior high
school weren’t allowed to take sci-
by
ence classes — only home econom-
ics. My parents had to get special
permission for me to take science.
And each weekend there were civil
rights demonstrations, where bigot-
ed counter-protesters would some-
times leave adults and my class-
mates bloodied and bruised.
Through relentless struggle, the
decades-long civil rights move-
ment earned African Americans
and other marginalized communi-
the legal right to marry.
But we’ve all seen and felt the
toxic backlash to that progress
since Donald Trump was elected.
The president has dehuman-
ized immigrants and other Latino
communities by calling them rap-
ists and animals. And last August,
after the deadly white nationalist
rally in Charlottesville, Virginia,
he claimed there were “very fine
people” on both sides.
I hung my Biloxi Junior High
School diploma alongside my oth-
er diplomas to remind me of what
we’ve all overcome — and how
much we have to lose. And every
day, when I see it, I’m instantly
transported back to that frighten-
ingly dangerous time.
If we allow yet another far-right
extremist to our nation’s highest
court, I fear another backlash is on
the horizon — a return to a time
Today, we are perilously close to
reviving an openly racist, hostile, and
xenophobic world for people like me and
many others.
ties stronger voting rights, de-seg-
regated schools and cultural es-
tablishments, equal employment,
fairer housing, and more.
Protests gave way to judicial
cases, giving us landmark de-
cisions like Brown v. Board of
Education and Roe v. Wade that
legalized protections for our per-
sonal freedoms. More recent cases
like 2015’s Obergefell v. Hodges
advanced civil rights to LGBTQ
communities.
It’s thanks to those hard-earned
wins that systemic racial segrega-
tion has been outlawed, access to
safe, legal abortion has been legal-
ized, and same-sex couples have
Not only is he normalizing racial
hostility and small-mindedness,
he’s re-institutionalizing it by add-
ing far-right extremists to his ad-
ministration and to our courts. And
now that Trump has nominated yet
another ideologue to the Supreme
Court, those rights we fought so
hard for are seriously endangered.
My experience as a young
woman in Mississippi gives me
intimate firsthand knowledge of
what’s at risk if that fuel is added
to an already growing fire. Today,
we are perilously close to reviving
an openly racist, hostile, and xe-
nophobic world for people like me
and many others.
when our rights were considered
secondary, if at all. I know I’m
not the only one who can’t let that
happen.
The Supreme Court is the final
judicial arbiter of fairness in our
system. Personally, I’ll be giving
every ounce of energy and grit I
have to fight Brett Kavanaugh’s
confirmation to that court. And
I hope other Americans who be-
lieve in equality and justice for all
will take it personally, too.
Yolanda “Cookie” Parker was
the founder and president of KMS
Software and is a board member
of People For the American Way.
Distributed by OtherWords.org.