Civil rights are, by definition, a political struggle. Both words mean politics. What you mean by ‘that’s not politics’ is that we should take for granted that every decent person agrees on this sort of thing, but-- were you paying attention in school? The majority of people were cool with siccing dogs on folks who wanted civil rights. Half the black-and-white photographs you’ve ever seen were surely about the explicitly political fight for civil rights.

Politics includes recognizing that a lot of people are just bastards.