Our country has advanced a long way since its inception, living up to it lofty ideals much more in modern times than it did at its founding. Slavery was written into our founding document, and women were written out of our laws, but the spirit for something better always existed. Many people today, particularly those who never had to overcome the country’s bias against their kind, look at our current state and bask in the glow of moral achievement. They shouldn’t.
The forward progress of our country was accomplished by the hard work and suffering of those who were denied liberty and opportunity. The African Americans who ran away from their masters, who sat at the lunch counters, and walked, as children, through crowds of screaming bigots to challenge the status quo. The suffragettes who rioted, who faced arrests in the streets and beatings at home to demand the right to vote. The members of the LGBTQ community who were left to die during the AIDS crisis and still can be fired simply for admitting who they are. Our country is better due to a long history of people who fought for what many of us were given at birth due to the color of our skin, the makeup of our gender, or some other random trait which we deserve no credit for.
So those who sit back and say that the current crop of protestors, whether it be the ones calling for a living wage or those demanding fair treatment by the police, need to tone down their rhetoric and accept change will happen but only in due course - those people are simply wrong. Slavery ended in the 1860’s and things got better, but only until they got worse in the 1930’s. Women gained the right to vote a hundred years ago, but the right to not be raped by their husbands only in this century. Equal marriage rights for homosexuals is still under threat by a regressive Supreme Court. Our country is now banning people based on their religious faith and making it legal to deny customers from businesses for arbitrary reasons. Things don’t always get better and it’s the straight, white, mostly male contingent who are primarily fighting to drag us away from the notion of justice for all.
If you think we have achieved justice, you are simply wrong. Our criminal justice system is biased against People of Color (https://www.vox.com/2014/8/14/6002175/its-not-just-ferguson-americas-criminal-justice-system-is-racist). Our economic system is still biased against women (https://www.vox.com/2016/4/12/11410270/equal-pay-day-2016-womens-choices-wage-gap). We still don’t give equal education and opportunity to the poor (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3059821/). Our system is rife with injustice and if you are not working to fix then you are standing in the way of those who are.
The protestors and agitators who call for change are the ones who point us in the right direction, and we ignore them at our own peril. And while the disadvantaged are the ones doing the heavy lifting, they can never achieve their goal unless the bulk of us, those who already have our personal justice, add our weight to their lever and help bend the universe in the right direction.
I heard a lot of talk about empathy after the last election, demanding that it be offered to those who were motivated by racial animus (https://www.vox.com/identities/2017/12/15/16781222/trump-racism-economic-anxiety-study) and a stated desire to go back to the way things were. It’s time to offer our empathy and our action to those who truly need and deserve it. If you believe our country has arced towards justice and you want that to continue, vote for the party that advocates for equality, be it gender, racial, or sexual orientation. Vote for the party that supports, and is supported by those who are fighting for justice. Vote Democrat.
“If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, there's no progress. If you pull it all the way out that's not progress. Progress is healing the wound that the blow made. And they haven't even pulled the knife out much less heal the wound. They won't even admit the knife is there.” Malcolm X
No comments:
Post a Comment
My world, my rules. Feel free to comment. I welcome dissent. I feel free to delete at my whim.