Home of the Free-ish

John Droescher

Engl 11000

23 Mar 2015

Home of the Free-ish

               “Home of the Free” is the resounding refrain championed by patriotic Americans. Yet the history of the United States is founded upon a system of race based institutionalized discrimination and disparagement that persists to this day.           Discrimination based on race is nearly synonymous with the settling of the Americas and the subsequent founding of the United States. Whether by official definition or by institutionalized racism, Africans in the Americas have found themselves enslaved from the time the first Europeans colonists arrived following “discovery” of this new world by Christopher Columbus through to the present day. Centuries after the first settlers landed in the Mid-Atlantic, war for freedom from what was arguably a tyrannical government was fought. Yet race based institutionalized discrimination remained enshrined within the very fabric of the “nation of the free” thus founded. A nation founded, ultimately, on the basis of enslavement of Africans and expropriation of American Indian lands.

               As the decades progressed and the Colonies began to form their identities, breaking of souls for financial benefit of their oppressors became further and more rigidly codified within the legal system. The 19^th Century witnessed the mass forced migration of American Indians dispossessed of their historical lands while African slavery reached new heights. Indian Removal was a formal National policy, as was slavery’s expansion into States newly admitted to the Union.

               Just shy of another century passed following the founding of the nation and a civil war was fought over the rights of one race to own those of another. Slavery was thereafter formally abolished. Yet race based institutionalized discrimination remained for another century in the form of Jim Crow laws and restrictive immigration policies. The mantle of those who had previously fought for racial equality was picked up in the mid-20th century leading to further concessions. And yet race based discrimination remains prominently divisive in society and politics to the current day.

               It could be argued, perhaps, that complacency amongst those oppressed led in no small part to the persistence of this institution. However, complacency can hardly bear sole, or even major, justification for the centuries of oppression. For complacency is hardly the culprit when the institution of slavery was systematically designed and implemented by the oppressor to break a man’s soul. Complacency is hardly the culprit when immigrant and Indian attempts to assimilate to the dominant culture were ignored based on nothing more than a fostered disdain.

               A few generations were all that were required to entrench in the American psyche this disdain for those of differing race, disdain and disparagement based solely on appearance and nationality. A disdain that has been promoted by those in power throughout the ensuing generations. A disdain that persists to this day as many of those in power continue to use race as a divisive topic. Political maneuvering designed to drive a wedge between the various groups that comprise the lower classes, bending public opinion to their will and allowing those in power to do as they wish; amassing great fortunes while the lower classes squabble in the streets over pennies.

               In response, the history of the United States, from colonization to the present day, is marked with champions of freedom who arose and chose to take upon themselves, often to their own demise, the mantle of resistance. Those slaves who escaped and those who assisted in the escapes. Those who fought for freedom on their own behalf, as well as on behalf of their fellow disparaged. Champions of freedom and equality. Champions not because of what they did individually. Champions because of their ability to unite the masses into one voice crying for freedom and equality for all and thereby effect change. Their rallying cry ultimately the reassertion that it is only through the coalescence of the common people in support of equality that the oppressors have been forced to relinquish their hold on these rights.

               In the early years of the new Nation, communities of free blacks in the more liberal northern cities created organizations with the purpose of promoting equal rights and supporting their fellow black Americans. These organizations united the voices crying out for freedom and equality. And for a time they were successful in obtaining higher levels of equality than had yet to fore been realized. Yet mere decades later those same gains in equality were nearly erased – lingering solely because the State Governments and Courts had ruled in favor of abolition. Meanwhile, Indian Removal efforts were renewed. With the Southern States refusing to acknowledge the civil and human rights of the slaves they owned the stage was set for civil war. And in 1861 that was precisely what happened. And while brother fought brother over the right to own a human of another race, racial discrimination against immigrants ran rampant in the Northern states. (Jones, 355-363)

               Following the cessation of armed conflict was a short period during which Southern Blacks were treated as equals. Blacks were awarded suffrage and used that right to elect their own to Local and State Governments. There existed few restrictions on movement, few restrictions on occupation, few restrictions on ability to create lives for themselves equal to the lives of southern whites. But ever so quickly was the tide turned and those civil liberties stripped away. Within a generation Jim Crow laws were passed reinstitutionalizing race based discrimination and disparagement, missing only the onus of the term ‘slavery’. (Jones, 372-375) Free men, yet bound by systemic racial discrimination. More disparaged than, but unlike, those Irish, Italian, Chinese, and so on, immigrants bound by more subtle means of discrimination.

               Just shy of a century later, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in his Letter From Birmingham Jail, references this long history of oppression. Arguing to support the need for direct, non-violent action to secure equal civil liberties in his time, Dr. King wrote that African Americans had waited “more than three hundred and forty years for [their] God-given and constitutional rights” while being told to “wait”. (3) “This ‘wait’ has almost always meant ‘never’” (3) as the history of Europeans in America reflects little progress made regarding equality, noting that “freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.” (2)

               A champion of equality in his time, Dr. King’s involvement in the 1960s’ racial equality movement played no small part in the measured success thereof. On the surface a rebuttal to a collective of Southern religious leaders, Dr. King’s letter was fundamentally a call for average white Americans to support the cause of racial equality. He knew, as many before him knew, that only by overcoming the political maneuvering that pitted the lower classes and minorities against each other could greater civil liberty for all be achieved. That would have been too bold an accusation for Dr. King to present, regardless of the validity. Rather he rhetorically laments in his letter that “the greatest stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councillor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice.” (3)

               Driven by protests and with the successful rallying of support from moderate white Americans, progress was made toward equality and restoring civil liberties for all races. Yet despite these advancements made in the mid-20^th Century, Senator Obama echoed precisely the same need for community, the need for voices to unite in the pursuit and defense of civil liberties, during his 2008 presidential campaign speech entitled “A More Perfect Union.” A brilliant orator, Senator Obama’s speech recognized the history of discrimination and the racial prejudices that have been passed through generations and persist to this day. He recognized that only by uniting together as one voice has the power of the oppressors, regardless of race, been diminished. That, to echo Dr. King, injustice for some is paramount to injustice for all. And then he, as those before him, urged the American people to unite. To forge that voice that would rise up and secure better lives for all Americans. That voice which is founded in the acknowledgement that “your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams.” (7)

               Those championing the rolling back of civil liberties earned through decades, nay centuries, of protest have fought to thwart, now President, Obama’s every attempt to promote equality, unity, and the general welfare. Immigration reform is the most obvious and convenient of these political talking points. So effective has the anti-immigrant vitriol been that when President Obama submitted his proposal for a universal healthcare, political opponents rallied behind the fallacy that universal healthcare would provide illegal immigrants healthcare at the taxpayer’s expense. Despite the benefits of improved access to healthcare for all people, many of those who would be benefited the most adopted this cry and continue to carry it based on nothing more than disdain for those who are different. And so there are wars fought in foreign countries and benefits granted to one group denied to other groups – the powerful exerting their influence to divide the people into smaller voices that can more easily be ignored.

               Thus do the wheels of time continue to carry humanity onward. As always there are those who wish to chip away at the civil liberties of the masses, to disable the immense power their combined voices wields. (Hobsbawm, 114) And there are those who will stand up, gather the masses into one voice, and fight for equality for they, knowing history, are keenly aware that it has been only the combined voices of the people crying out that effected change. The time seems ripe for another of these champions to arise. Perhaps, however, rather than wait for another champion, the people should educate themselves on the history of disparagement and actively work to protect themselves and their fellow brethren from those who would prey on their ignorance and complacency.

Works Cited

Hobsbawm, E. J. 1917-2012. Echoes of the Marseillaise: Two Centuries Look Back On the French                Revolution. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1990.

Jones, Jacqueline A. Created Equal: A History of the United States, Volume 1. Place of Publication Not        Identified: Pearson, 2013. Print.

King, Martin Luther, Jr. “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” Rpt in “The Negro is Your Brother.” The Atlantic                Monthly August 1963: 78-88. Print.

Obama, Barack. Speech: “A More Perfect Union.” 18 Mar 2008.