Civil rights are defined as the rights of citizens to equal social and political participation in a society. This normally includes a right to vote, freedom of speech and the press, the right to a free public education, protection from arbitrary arrest and imprisonment, and the right to a fair trial.
A pluralistic society is defined as one where people of different backgrounds and with different belief systems are allowed to have a voice in determining social and political policy.
As these definitions show, civil rights are a necessary precondition to the development of a healthy pluralistic society. As many people as possible ought to have as many avenues as possible to express their views without fear if a pluralist society is to develop and flourish. There needs to be, as it is often put, a marketplace of ideas, rather than lockstep thinking.
The opposite of a pluralistic society is a totalitarian or dictatorial regime, in one person (or a small cartel of people with very similar beliefs) makes all the decisions. A pluralistic society is seen as stronger than a totalitarian state because it allows multiple views to be aired and allows as many people as possible to participate in the running of the state.
However, when civil rights are suppressed through polices such as the voting laws that discriminated against black folks in the South in the 1950s or the loss of a free press through mergers and monopolies, fewer people have a voice in setting the goals and agenda of a society. It is very easy in such a situation for many needs to go unheard, leaving problems unaddressed until they fester into social unrest, riots, and revolutions.
A pluralistic society is one where diverse groups thrive together by building a common society that is supportive and understanding of individual differences. Within this society, part of the goal of interactions between groups is to build understanding, even in areas where there are major disagreements between groups. With a pluralistic democracy, the individuals within society also elect their leaders or directly vote on issues. A pluralistic society is the ideal, but creating a society using these principles based solely on the good will of individuals is difficult—a major conflict or difficulty can occur when two groups both have deeply held beliefs that conflict with each other.
Civil rights are the principles used to adjudicate these disputes. They typically are the most highly valued rights of a society. For example, in the United States, the most highly valued civil rights are the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The United States Constitution, including the Bill of Rights, outlines the rest of the civil rights of the United States. The rights contained within this document are used to decide disputes between groups, in an attempt to use higher principles to decide the issues of the day. The hope is that by using these higher principles, contentious issues of liberty and equality can be decided in a just manner. However, this adjudication must be done by individuals, such as the Supreme Court Justices, and therefore can be skewed by the views of the individuals making the adjudication. Regardless, without civil rights, pluralism on a societal scale becomes very difficult because the views of different groups eventually come into conflict. Thus, civil rights are required for a pluralistic democracy.
http://constitutionus.com/
http://pluralism.org/what-is-pluralism/
https://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/
Pluralism and civil rights tend to go hand in hand. A democratic society that protects the civil rights of its people will include the voices of every group within it. With greater access to political involvement and with a more equitable distribution of political resources, every group can have a say in democracy. There are many historical and contemporary examples in which a group has been denied their civil rights. This has nearly always led to a lack of representation in government and unequal access to employment and education. However, when the civil rights of all groups are protected, the situation changes into a more pluralistic one.
In the 1960s, political scientist Robert Dahl published an interesting study in which he looked at political power and representation in New Haven, Connecticut. He determined that, as this was a city that did a relatively good job of protecting its citizens' civil rights, New Haven had a truly pluralistic democratic community.
https://books.google.com.co/books/about/Who_Governs.html?id=-L99RHLc3WoC&redir_esc=y
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