Balancing Majority and Minority Rights in America

The United States of America has debated the topic of whether the rights of the majority should outweigh the rights of the minority from the time before the nation was formed. The idea of Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness was placed in the Declaration of Independence because these ideals were what the colonies based their decision to part from Great Britain on. This idealism carried on into the creation of the Constitution and many of the laws that followed. This is evident throughout the United States’ history with specific events such as the Plessy v. Ferguson decision, Brown v. Board of Education decision, and the Japanese-American Relocation during World War II. In more current events, the Patriot Act must be considered.

Each one of these incidents may be analyzed to gain further understanding of why the majority should not trump the minority in a given instance if the United States is to remain in accordance with the ideals of the Constitution. The rights of the majority should never trump the rights of a minority because in essence this would be a violation of the minorities’ civil liberties.
First, let’s consider the Japanese Relocation and Incarceration during World War II. After Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941 America and Britain declared war on Japan. “President Franklin D. Roosevelt then signs Executive Order 9066. This order led to the assembly and evacuation and relocation of nearly 122,000 men, women, and children of Japanese ancestry on the west of the United States.” (Relocation and Incarceration of Japanese Americans During World War II) This demonstrates how the civil liberties of a minority group was violated under the guise of national security measures. The majority in the United States were in panic due to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor which in turn allowed another group(politicians and agricultural interest groups on the west coast) to take advantage of the situation and remove the Japanese from their areas of interest. In the end, this panicked response caused these Japanese Americans to lose what America was supposedly founded on, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Next, there was the Plessy v. Ferguson decision. This decision allowed for a “separate but equal” doctrine to be established in the United States. This was important because during this time period the nation was still dealing with what to do with black Americans. Although they were freed nearly fifty years prior to this decision, their civil liberties as men were still not allotted to them. The southerners passed laws to keep the blacks in a state worse than slavery. The time of Jim Crow left a stain on America that it is still trying to rectify in many ways today. This decision allowed states to racially segregate its citizens and essentially disenfranchise blacks and poor whites. Overall, this decision made by the Supreme Court was against the minority (blacks, numerically) and for the majorities (whites) benefit. This caused the next few generations of blacks to be legally treated as second class citizens. Although the Supreme Court may not have intended to create this environment, their decision was a reflection of the ideologies and mindsets of the majority of America during this time. Again, when decisions to just “go” along with the majority or with a given theme of a time period occurs, the long term effects may prove to be unpleasant.
Brown v Board of Education is an example of how minority rights can be used for the betterment of society.

In this landmark Supreme Court decision the Court declared separate public schools for black and white students to be unconstitutional therefore overturning Plessy v. Ferguson. The white south enjoyed their victory with Plessy v. Ferguson for over fifty years before the Supreme Court was able to begin righting their mistake. The long term effect of Plessy v. Ferguson was evident in the fact that blacks did not make much progress towards becoming more educated, informed, and productive citizens since the Thirteenth amendment was adopted. There were gains but overall the gap in prosperity especially in the south between blacks and whites continued to widen. The disparity in the distributions of funding between the two races were extremely evident in education. The advantages that whites gained during this time period placed them in a position to hold financial and educational advantages over blacks that even linger today. The lack of equal education doomed generations of blacks to mediocrity while their white counterparts were able to make huge gains for themselves and their children. This is one of the mains debates about affirmative action. Due to the unfair advantages given to whites, especially during the New Deal and Fair Deal policies of the 1930s and 1940s, the black population’s prosperity fell well behind the nation’s white majority (Katznelson). Brown v. Board of Education was the first step to trying to rectify this situation. This example of how protecting the rights and liberties of a minority can positively affect the majority. For the nation as a whole, having citizens that are productive, prosperous, educated and content will (in the long run) provide a more united prosperous

nation.
In more recent years the concept of civil liberties have been tested with the passage of the Patriot Act and National Homeland Security Act. These acts were enacted as a direct result of the September 11, 2001 attacks by al-Qaeda on the United States. Similar to the panic witnessed after Pearl Harbor, Americans turned to the government to ease their fears. Their response was the Patriot Act and the National Homeland Security Act. Although at the time many Americans believed this legislation to be necessary, in retrospect many now question its legality and the powers they give the government. To sum it up, the Patriot Act allows the government to spy on its own citizens, bypass the right to due process, and violate its citizens privacy by monitoring telephone, e-mail, and internet use by terrorist suspects(with a loose definition of what a terrorist is) (The USA PATRIOT Act: Preserving Life and Liberty). These steps were taken to protect the majority at the expense of the minority (Americans of Middle East decent). This inadvertently empowered the federal government to violate our personal lives at their and remove the liberties of citizens at its discretion.
When the founding fathers wrote the Federalist Papers they understood there would be times when the government would be forced into action and that the decisions made at those times could possibly pit its citizens against it. Madison spoke of this when he wrote “…but cool and candid people will at once reflect, that the purest of human blessings must have a portion of alloy in them; that the choice must always be made, if not of the lesser evil, at least of the greater, not the perfect good; and that in every political institution, a power to advance the public happiness, involves a discretion which may be misapplied an abused.” (Willison) This demonstrates Madison’s understanding of how the government possibly could abuse its powers. He understood that the nature of having a government is that there always will be a risk that its power may be abused. As demonstrated by the examples of American history listed in this paper, Madison beliefs hold true. In each instance the rights of the majority were upheld over the rights of the minority, and each event ended in a shameful stain in America’s history. Holding fast to the principles of liberty as described in the Declaration of Independence and attributing these liberties to ALL American citizens will be true path to America’s quest for domestic tranquility.