The 1964 Civil Rights Act: Narrating the Past, Authorizing the Future

Abstract

Civil rights legislation of the sixties and seventies sought to end racial discrimination in the United States; doing so required that the federal government establish an official ethnoracial taxonomy in order to specify who was and was not covered by the various statutes. Specifically, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Fair Housing Act of 1968, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974, and the Home Mortgage Act of 1975 required federal agencies to identify particular groups to be monitored for evidence of discrimination. Since these statutes were enacted, scholars and activists have argued over their political effects. In fact, the questions raised are legion: Who has benefitted from civil rights protections? Has discrimination diminished or simply morphed into new forms? Who counts as a minority and on what grounds? How has the massive immigration of the last four decades intersected civil rights reform? Should foreign nationals qualify for civil rights protections? If yes, how do more recent claims to diversify fit with older notions that civil rights legislation as a means of redressing past wrongs?