Vicissitudes and Victories

A Tale of Two Nations

I thought that now would be an appropriate time to ponder the nature of the United States and its history. As an American historian, I spend significant amounts of time pondering over the history of this nation and what that history means. 230 years ago a group of outlaws (the Continental Congress) came together after weeks of debate to sign a document that declared the reasons and the logic behind the decision made by thirteen small and diverse colonies to declare themselves independent from the king of England. Although the introduction contained one of the foremost treatises ever written about the rights of man, the main document primarily enumerated the reasons why the American colonists felt that King George III was acting tyrannically. One of Thomas Jefferson's original reasons for independence accused the king of propagating the vile and evil slave trade, this reason was conveniently removed by a slave supporting Congress. Yet the Declaration of Independence does represent one of the most eloquent discussions of what human beings should seek after from a government. It espoused the idea that all men were created equal and that they should receive protection from a government to do those things they deem correct and good as long as those things don't infringe on the rights of others or are morally wrong. It was a revolutionary indeed for the government of any state, however small and inconsequential, to embrace such principles as part of its foundation. The inclusion of such ideas in a government's philosophy was unthinkable before the American Revolution.

Over time, we as Americans have sometimes done well embracing the idealistic identity created for us by the Declaration of Independence. When the government was formed, these principles were only seen as applicable to white, property-owning men. As the nation expanded and the working population grew, the government, especially under the administration of Andrew Jackson, began to recognize all white males as being worthy of governmental participation. The Civil War expanded sovereignty and suffrage, at least in precept, to black men as well. In practice, blacks would live as second class citizens for years to come. Only when the courts and presidents threatened segregationalists with military intervention in the 1950s and 1960s did blacks begin to find true and equal protection under the law.

In 1848 a group of women gathered at a convention near Seneca Falls, New York and created a declaration proclaiming that the rights espoused by the Declaration of Independence should be extended to women as well. Women were emboldened by the critical role they had played in the Temperance and Abolitionist Movements. In the Seneca Falls Declaration, women declared, "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal." Once again, this declaration primarily represented white, middle-class women. Not until the 1970s would most women receive the same rights espoused in the Declaration of Independence that men had enjoyed for generations.

Minorities have lived as second-class citizens for the majority of the history of the United States. Blacks were enslaved and segregated. Asian immigrants could not legally become citizens until 1953. In the 1930s, the government deported Mexican American citizens to Mexico and in the 1940s they imprisoned Japanese American citizens for having the faces of the enemy

But why focus on the dark spots in our nation's history? Am I just opening old wounds? Isn't the United States the greatest nation in the history of the world? Through all of its faults, I do believe that the United States has been one of the most just nations to its people in the history of the world. When compared to other nations, we probably exercised less bigotry and hatred than any other major nation in the modern world. Yet focusing only on our strengths can blind us to the many weaknesses evident in the United States's history and present. The narrative I previously presented was meant to illustrate that the story of the United States is not only a story of freedom and liberty, but of racism and prejudice. So many people only understand the "what's", but not the "why's" of racism and prejudice, and so they don't understand why they are so important.

Racism defined is any thought, word, or deed that establishes, reifies, or ignores social hierarchies based on race. Thus, anything we do, say, or think that implies that people of another color are not as good as we are is inherently racist. Race is not just about color. It is about culture and class. If we attack another race's culture or class dynamics as being inherently inferior we are being racist as well. The funny thing is that these racial hierarchies become as ingrained in the minds of minorities as in the ideas of people not of those minorities. I think that racism is actually on the decline in American society. Less and less people consciously believe that people of other races are either superior or inferior.

Prejudice, on the other hand, continues to run rampant in our society. Prejudice defined is the assumptions we make about other people's humanity without knowing them. Prejudice is sneaky. It creates ideas like Asians are smart, and Mexicans are lazy. People begin to believe that gangs are just for minorities and only black children grow up in single parent homes. The funny thing about prejudice is how pervasive it becomes; how easily it is to pin assumptions about a person's race to people in general. Because most blacks score lower on test scores, they must be stupid. Therefore, my black friend must either be stupid, or he is an exception to the rule. These prejudiced assumptions come to pervade the thoughts of everyone and are not exclusively directed toward people of other races.

All racism is based on prejudice, but not all prejudice is based on racism. We all have prejudices, though we might not all be racists. The incredible thing about prejudice is that although it is almost universally pervasive, it easily disappears. Prejudice cannot exist when we see someone else as being equally as human as we are. This is why diversity is a good idea: because it breaks down barriers of prejudice if we'll let it. On the other hand, affirmative action is a policy about race. It seeks to reconstruct racial hierarchies in employment and education, but in doing so is it embracing prejudiced assumptions? I hope that I am giving just a taste of how complex and complicated the world of race and ethnicity can be. No wonder politicians have historically had an incredibly difficult time dealing with either prejudice or race.

Do I think we, as a nation, are doing better? I hope so. I know that the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution give us a framework for tolerance in good government. I believe in the ideas of liberty and freedom. We need to judge each of our nation's present policies against this framework. We must search and destroy the vestiges of racism and prejudice passed on to us by those with less informed ideas about others. This is how we honor the idea of America, and this is how we will come to live what we believe. God bless America!!!!!!

posted by Joel @ 12:48 PM