Via change.org: Right to Discriminate

The U.S. is debating the Civil Rights Act of 1964...all over again.

No, we're not stuck in some kind of crazy time warp - it's just election season 2010.

This past week, the victor in Kentucky's Republican Senate primary and Tea Party favorite Rand Paul decided to come out swinging against parts of the Civil Rights Act. It's not that he supports racism, Paul says. But he does support private businesses' right to deny certain customers based on whether they're black or white in the name of "private ownership."

As NAACP President and Change.org Changemaker Benjamin Jealous writes this week, Paul is leading U.S. voters down a dangerous, ill-informed path.

According to Paul, the market's free hand would eventually have forced most businesses to serve black people.

But Paul is badly in need of a history lesson. Even after Jim Crow laws were reversed, those businesses that actually served blacks were still subject to threats and outright violence - often sanctioned by local and state governments. The market would never have eliminated slavery, and it's not going to eliminate racism, either.

After making his inflammatory comments on NPR and the Rachel Maddow Show and sparking widespread backlash, Paul went silent. On Friday, he canceled his planned appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press." He's now equivocating on his statements about whether he would have voted the Civil Rights Act, but he hasn't backtracked on his argument that companies should have the right to deny service to blacks and other minorities.

All this is conduct hardly befitting a candidate for the United States Senate. By endorsing a system that allows businesses to humiliate and discriminate against minorities at will, Paul is appealing to the worst strands of our nation's history. And by then shrinking from debate after his reckless comments, he's failing to give the voters of Kentucky a clear sense of where he really stands.

NAACP President Benjamin Jealous has offered to debate Rand Paul about the Civil Rights Act and the role of discrimination in America - anytime, anywhere. If Rand Paul wants a seat in the highest elected body in the country, he should be willing to an open debate about his vision for America.

Join our challenge to Rand Paul to a debate with Benjamin Jealous now.