Omar Gholston
4/22/2012
POS 111 Unit 4, Question 3

Visit the websites below and then write an essay explaining the distinction between civil rights and human rights. Should the United States be bound by international law concerning human rights? The Merriam-Webster dictionary describes Civil Rights as the nonpolitical rights of a citizen especially the rights of personal liberty guaranteed to the United States citizens by the 13th and 14th amendments to the constitution and by acts of Congress. Our country has been dealing with the issue of civil rights since its existence. The first Civil Rights Act was passed in 1875 which allowed equal rights for African Americans but it was struck down in 1883 because the Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution can’t tell private businesses or any individual who to discriminate against. So the struggle for civil rights had to be fought harder. The promises that were made to protect civil rights in the Thirteenth Amendment were first kept then broken. Many states found their way around the flimsy wording of the Fourteenth Amendment. The case of Strauder v. West Virginia, the Supreme Court overturned a law keeping African Americans from jury duty but they refused to extend the amendment so that it contained a more narrow interpretation. One of the biggest segregation problems of our time led to a new era for civil rights which was the integration of the public school system. The NAACP, which is the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, decided to test the” separate but equal” doctrine (Plessy v. Furgusson), and they took the case to court and won. After that case was won there were still problems desegregating the schools. In 1969 15 years after the first ruling President Eisenhower sent troops to Little Rock Arkansas to desegregate Central High school. Today our courts have a much better interpretation of civil rights but we will always have discrimination until people fully learn to get along, which I don’t think I will ever see in my time. Human rights are defined as rights from things such as torture, unlawful imprisonment and execution regarded as belonging fundamentally to all people, rights that all human beings are entitled to regardless of race or religion. Human rights are based on the principle of respect for the individual. Their fundamental assumption is that each person is a moral and rational being who deserves to be treated with dignity. They are called human rights because they are universal. Most nations or specialized groups enjoy specific rights that apply only to them human rights are the rights to which everyone is entitled to no matter who they are or where they live just because they are alive. I’m sure if you asked some people what their rights are some would only list freedom of speech and belief and perhaps one or two others. There is no question these are important rights, but the full scope of human rights is very broad. They mean choice and opportunity. They mean the freedom to obtain a job, adopt a career, select a partner of one’s choice and raise children. They include the right to travel widely and the right to work gainfully without harassment or abuse. The Magna Carta was a document the King of England was forced to sign by his subjects after he violated numerous amounts of ancient laws, this was thought to be the first fight for human rights. But there were many more documents in history that involved human rights such as Petition of Right (1628), the US Constitution (1787), the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789), and the US Bill of Rights (1791) are the written precursors to many of today’s human rights documents. There have been many instances in history where human rights were violated in mass proportions such as Slavery of African Americans, Trail of Tears, and the Holocaust. International Human Rights laws were pushed forward by Eleanor Roosevelt, President Franklin Roosevelt’s widow, she had such a strong passion for human rights. She set out to draft the document that became the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Roosevelt, credited with its inspiration, referred to the Declaration as the “international Magna Carta for all mankind.” It was adopted by the United Nations on December 10, 1948. I don’t believe the U.S. should be bound by any law when it comes to human rights being violated. We all have a human duty to protect innocent people from being persecuted and we did so with all the different wars we fought. If the United States was forced not to interfere with international violations then there would be no order in the world. I believe our nation was created by God to be a buffer for other nation’s problems. So in conclusion I think our nation is doing its best to fix things that crippled us as a human race and with the help of other nations we can prosper.

Works Cited http://www.civilrights.org/about/index.html http://www.hrweb.org/ http://media.pearsoncmg.com/pcp/pls_21270571646/0205662870_ebook/index.html http://www.merriam-webster.com/
http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/