"WHITE" THE TACIT, UNSPOKEN ADJECTIVE
Idealism and optimism lifted the colonial powers to epiphany. They waxed eloquently when conceiving of their government as being one that would be "democratic"-"republican" of the people, for the people, and by the people.
But, the designers' unspoken adjective was "white," meaning white people.
The U.S. Supreme Court made this tacit, unspoken adjective's absence very absolutely clear in "Dred Scott v. Sanford" in 1857, wherein it said that not only were blacks--slave or free--not citizens; but neither were blacks "persons" at all, but chattels in their construction of the United States Constitution. Thus, black human beings had no rights that a white man was bound to respect, civil or otherwise. That definitive holding was the law of the land, the official position of the American government. Period .It brought about secession and Civil War.
Of course, those were mere words! but words have power, make an impact.
On the ground, blacks were flying to Canada in the tens of thousands, depriving the South of its most valuable assets, all more precious than the land, livestock or produce: black slave labor! They were daily declaring their own independence!
Even Dred and wife Harriet Scott 's iconic lawsuit was another "black-self Declaration of Independence."Hundreds of earlier Missouri slaves had already, via "Freedom Suits," gained their freedom in litigation in St. Louis, Missouri..
Thus, in 2018, under President Donald John Trump, reading the words of Thomas Paine, a "lesser"--non-slave-owning-- Founding Father, who was the immigrant-philosopher of our Revolution, I must view their complete society.
Paine writes:
"Misfortune ever separates men in a bad cause, and unites them in a good one. The former are industrious only while they are prosperous, and the latter while they are distressed. The one acts from impulse , the other from contrivance; and the whole mode and progress of their conduct, and their times of rest and action, are the reverse of the other."
P. 309, "The Necessity of Taxation," THOMAS PAINE COLLECTED WRITINGS (1955)
Americans paid a heavy price in Civil War for its early bane of black people. Dare it now do so again, with a President who brings shame, chagrin to most?
Monday, March 5, 2018
"WHITE" UNSPOKEN ADJECTIVE
"WHITE" THE TACIT, UNSPOKEN ADJECTIVE
Idealism and optimism lifted the colonial powers to epiphany. They waxed eloquently when conceiving of their government as being one that would be "democratic"-"republican" of the people, for the people, and by the people.
But, the designers' unspoken adjective was "white," meaning white people.
The U.S. Supreme Court made this tacit, unspoken adjective's absence very absolutely clear in "Dred Scott v. Sanford" in 1857, wherein it said that not only were blacks--slave or free--not citizens; but neither were blacks "persons" at all, but chattels in their construction of the United States Constitution. Thus, black human beings had no rights that a white man was bound to respect, civil or otherwise. That definitive holding was the law of the land, the official position of the American government. Period .It brought about secession and Civil War.
Of course, those were mere words! but words have power, make an impact.
On the ground, blacks were flying to Canada in the tens of thousands, depriving the South of its most valuable assets, all more precious than the land, livestock or produce: black slave labor! They were daily declaring their own independence!
Even Dred and wife Harriet Scott 's iconic lawsuit was another "black-self Declaration of Independence."Hundreds of earlier Missouri slaves had already, via "Freedom Suits," gained their freedom in litigation in St. Louis, Missouri..
Thus, in 2018, under President Donald John Trump, reading the words of Thomas Paine, a "lesser"--non-slave-owning-- Founding Father, who was the immigrant-philosopher of our Revolution, I must view their complete society.
Paine writes:
"Misfortune ever separates men in a bad cause, and unites them in a good one. The former are industrious only while they are prosperous, and the latter while they are distressed. The one acts from impulse , the other from contrivance; and the whole mode and progress of their conduct, and their times of rest and action, are the reverse of the other."
P. 309, "The Necessity of Taxation," THOMAS PAINE COLLECTED WRITINGS (1955)
Americans paid a heavy price in Civil War for its early bane of black people. Dare it now do so again, with a President who brings shame, chagrin to most?