Chapters 2 & 3

I found Wellman's breakdown of the different types of rights (first, second, and third generation) particularly helpful because it gave us a more in depth look into where moral rights were first introduced, anciently, and how they came to be recognized as "fundamental moral rights of man in the constitutional law (p16)." First generation rights are political and civil in nature. Although there is no perfect right I feel that these are the rights that are most easily understood and enforcable mainly because of the moral duty and importance that is attached to them. Most of us would feel ok saying that we are pretty secure in the fact that we share the rights of life, liberty, and property. Also I think that we can morally justify wanting to seek refuge from persecution like in the right to asylum. However,this only names a few, are all of our so called human rights really protected and who's job is it to protect them?

But now I want to skip to chapter 3 for a minute and discuss new civil rights. Wellman focuses on three different topics in this chapter nonsegegated public education, interracial marriage, and preferential addmissions. Today I think that we take for granted or just can't imagine what it would of been like to live in a time when you could not attend school on the basis of race. From the definition that we get of civil rights, belonging to every citizen, it's hard to see how things got that out of control. It's great to see that our government has taken a stance on some issues regaurding race and racial discrimination. There is no denying that preventing children from reciveing an education solely on the basis of race is wrong, even though some believed it was perfectly alllright. Interracial marrige is also something that we can see everyday now but at one time people really believed that it was wrong. This one really got me because the whole time I was reading it I was thinking of the recent culture war over same-sex marriage. If two people love each other, want to raise a family, and have a right to the pursuit of happiness, shouldn't they be able to get married. So the issue then was race and now it's sexual preference, maybe a proliferation of rights could come in handy right now. Also I fimly believe that if African Americans want to attend school and they are given preferential addmittance then that is wonderful. Personally, and I know this will get comments, I think that we, "white people", do alot of unnessary whineing. Everyday in alot of ways we are privlaged in so many ways not because we earned it becaue we are white. There is Affirmative Action but who cares if we haven't noticed the population is a majority white and I can safely say that most schools proablly follow suit, so all I'm saying with that is there are a lot of white students being accepted and rejected every year, period. Also there is stilll a huge education gap and even if we weren't the ones to personally mess everything up we need to stand up and permenatly fix it. In my opinion I think that even upper level education should be free for African Americans it's time to pay back what we owe. Also you can't be the victim of racial discrimination when you are the majority that dosn't make sense.

Back to chapter two, Second generation rights are economic, social, and cultural rights. These rights I had a hard time with because I agree with the arguement on p 23 that it seems as if they are not enforceable. Although it seems like there should be some kind of legal protection for them there isn't so my question from last week remains... Are these really rights at all? It seems that with out legal support and proper funding these. I thought that third generation rights was pretty well explained basically they seem to be rights that are relevant to a group and not just an individual like, as Wellman states, genocide.