A political science professor stands before a crowd and calls for women to be kept out of engineering, medical schools and the legal profession so they can instead focus on “feminine goals” such as “homemaking and having children.” Being in the workforce, he says, has made modern women “more medicated, meddlesome and quarrelsome than women need to be.”
No, this is not an item from a dusty history book. It happened in October at a conservative conference in Florida, and the professor was Scott Yenor from Boise State.
And here’s the kicker: Yenor’s chauvinistic comments apparently raised no eyebrows among the conference’s participants. Only when video of the professor’s speech went viral last week did he draw criticism.
This is a snapshot of where the new American right wants to lead the country — back to a world characterized by sexism, racism and anti-Semitism.
We see it in a variety of forms, including the Supreme Court’s conservative majority looking at effectively repealing Roe v. Wade. Meanwhile, Republican leadership in several states have approved their own curtailments of women’s reproductive rights, voter suppression laws that disproportionately affect communities of color, etc. And all the while, the GOP, by not condemning white supremacy, has embraced it.
With conservatives trying to turn back the clock to a more discriminatory time for our country, it’s worth pointing out exactly what that looked like for the groups whose rights were suppressed. Following are select examples.
Women
• Until enactment of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974, women could not open a bank account or obtain credit cards, loans or mortgages in their name, at least without a co-sign by their husband or a male relative.
• Women could not sit on a jury in all 50 states until 1968.
• Until 1971, women who had obtained law degrees and passed the bar could be prevented from pleading a client’s case.
• Women could not gain admittance into every Ivy League school until 1977, when Harvard became the last of the schools to accept women. They were also barred from the West Point military academy until 1976.
• Until passage of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978, a woman could lose her job for taking maternity leave. Until 1964, it was legal for employers to reject women job applicants solely on the basis of their gender.
• Several states banned single women from obtaining birth control pills until the early 1970s. Others required married women to obtain their husband’s permission in order to get a prescription.
• Well into the 1960s, adoption agencies commonly issued blanket bans on requests from single women to adopt children.
Minorities
• As most Americans are well aware, Jim Crow laws curtailed Blacks people’s voting rights, as well as their property and civil rights. These laws also excluded African Americans from public transportation and facilities, jury service, jobs, white schools and neighborhoods. However, the Jim Crow era also solidified several social and cultural norms that relegated Black people to second-class status.
• Among those norms: A Black man could not initiate a handshake with a white man because it implied being socially equal; Black people could not kiss or show affection toward one another in public because it was considered offensive to whites; white motorists received the right-of-way in all circumstances; and Black people were required to use courtesy titles when addressing white people, but the reverse was not required.
• Through the late 1960s, so-called sundown towns and neighborhoods were common throughout the nation. These white-majority communities banned minorities during certain hours, often after sunset. These areas included Minden and Gardnerville, which barred Native Americans during certain hours. Despite opposition, Minden continues to sound a whistle that was used to alert Native Americans to leave the city.
• Until passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968, redlining was legal. This practice, which the federal government adopted in the 1930s, allowed mortgage lenders to deny loans for properties in areas that were deemed “hazardous” — often home to large Black, minority and immigrant populations. The purpose was to deny homeownership to people of color and create disinvestment in minority communities.
Jewish Americans
• The history of the United States is threaded with anti-Semitic hate crimes and systemic racism against Jews, including lynchings, immigration policy restricting Jews from entering the nation, and common covenants that barred Jewish Americans from living in certain white communities. Today’s conservatives give lip service to supporting Israel, yet many don’t condemn or disavow white supremacists. Predictably, anti-Semitic hate crimes have been on the rise in recent years.
• Before dipping during the pandemic, these hate crimes were running at historic levels. The Anti-Defamation League reported that crimes against Jews in 2019 hit the highest level on record since the ADL began tracking incidents in the 1970s. In 2018, the level was the third-highest on record.
• In 2018, Jews were more than twice as likely as Black people and other communities of color to be targeted by hate crimes. (We’ll note a caveat to this study: It does not include routine police stops and other forms of intimidation that Black communities experience as outright hate crimes.)
• Also in 2018, Jews and LGBTQ individuals were the most frequent target of hate crimes.
Again, this is just a sampling of the many ways in which these groups have been discriminated against — and would still face discrimination today if not for progress on social justice.
Nor were these the only groups that endured race-related violence and institutionalized bias. Hispanic Americans and Asian Americans suffered forced deportations, forced internment, mob violence, sanctioned job discrimination and many other forms of racism. Violence against Latino communities was particularly rampant in the 1960s and early 1970s. In some states, LGBTQ Americans faced criminal penalties for same-sex sexual intercourse until as recently as 2003. The nation’s intergenerational, genocidal racism against Native Americans is a chapter unto itself.
For millions of Americans, this was life in our nation under the thumb of white, Christian male dominance. And it was that way until very recently — well within the memory of baby boomers.
Blessedly, the nation has benefited in recent decades through gains a progressive America has secured for all people. Much more progress is needed, but the arc has bent toward greater equality.
Now, however, these gains are threatened daily by the GOP and its extremist masters.
Will Americans allow this to happen?