Video from Lex Fridman
GUEST BIO: Christopher Capozzola is a professor of history at MIT.
What Must the US Do to Sustain its Democracy?
"Recent months have been tumultuous for U.S. democracy, in ways that are both novel and yet also connected to conflicts seen throughout the country’s past. MIT News spoke to several of the Institute’s political scientists and historians, and asked them: What must the U.S. do to sustain the health of its democracy?
Melissa Nobles, the Kenan Sahin Dean of the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, and professor of political science:
Americans must collectively affirm that democracy is “the only game in town,” and that we are now a multiracial democracy. To be sure, the path to full democracy has been fiercely contested. After Congress passed the 15th Amendment to the Constitution in 1870, it was another 95 years before Congress passed the Voting Rights Act in 1965, in response to the civil rights movement.
A defining feature of “Jim Crow” segregation in the U.S. South had been Black disenfranchisement. White southern politicians did not want to be accountable to Black voters or to have their political fortunes determined by them. They wanted subjects, not citizens. And many white southerners were not supportive of full political equality for their fellow Black southerners. They too did not want Black voter preferences taken into account. A healthy democracy requires equality, accommodation, mutual regard among citizens, dissent, and consent.." from the article: What Must the US Do to Sustain its Democracy?
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