250 years ago, a bunch of British, French, German, Dutch, Scots-Irish and other white male slave owners, broke from the English Monarchy and declared themselves a country independent of British rule.
They broke every promise they ever made to Native peoples and upheld slavery of West African peoples for another 87 years, having a Civil War to finally end it. They did not expect their women to vote, own or inherit property, or work outside the home. This new nation THEN created “Separate But (NOT) Equal” in 1896 and laws against interracial marriage for another 71 years. Of course, descendants of the African slaves and many other white and brown-skinned men and women fought to be able to freely vote in Federal elections, until the 19th amendment in 1920, Civil Rights Act of 1964, Voting Rights Act of 1965, and a U.S. Supreme Court case that made same sex marriage legal in 2015.
Passage of these freedoms or rights came NOT through just protests or civilized consultation but through vicious, incomprehensible attacks of violence on precious lives, among them 14-year-old Emmett Till, tortured, his body thrown in a river, for having the audacity to whistle or flirt in some way with a white woman in a southern grocery store, who then felt compelled to report this to her racist and brutally violent husband and others. There was Denise McNair (11), Addie Mae Collins (14), Carole Robertson (14), and Cynthia Wesley (14), blown apart in a morning church service in Birmingham, Alabama courtesy of the Ku Klux Klan; white Jewish and Black American students murdered for sitting at a lunch counter asking to be served the same as other white people; and countless other named and unnamed souls including babies born to Native American girls subjected to rape after being forcibly taken from their families and placed in schools where they could not speak their Native languages, dress in Native dress, or worship God in their traditional manner.
Every freedom won came at a cost of precious lives.
Asian peoples took their cases to the U.S. Supreme Court, to become citizens of this new country at a time when only white Europeans could apply. Mr. Takao Ozawa of Japanese origins, said, “I am as American as any of you,” and argued that Japanese peoples should be considered as “free white citizens”, to which the 1922 Supreme Court replied, “You are not Caucasian.” A year later, Mr. Thindh, a Sikh from India, took his case to the court with a science book that classified Indian peoples from India as Caucasian. Their answer? “Any common man knows what white is, and You. Are. Not. It.” After this decision, a naturalized citizen, Mr. Vaishno Das Bagai, also from India and a prominent early civil rights activist, was stripped of his citizenship. He committed suicide.
And NOW, we come today, 250 years a nation, time for a BIG CELEBRATION.
We are equal under the law, but unequal as we live and practice that law. Native peoples still fight for protection of water and land, and to be known by their own names. Hispanic peoples, legal or not, live in constant FEAR of ICE agents in masks and unmarked cars. Black peoples have come far, but still have lower rates of income, higher rates of poverty, and a legal system that tends to view them as suspect.
Double Consciousness is alive and well. Our leaders are not leaders but chase their own dreams of greed and fight to keep their own crimes out of public eye. They pit us against one another. As long as they keep us DIVIDED, we cannot be UNITED.
So where do we go from here?
We fight for justice any way we can,
We stay connected, come together,
Check on our neighbors,
Beg help from our Creator,
We turn our HATRED into LOVE.
“Where there is hatred, let me sow love” *
And not give in to my despair,
“I have decided to stick with love,
For hate is too great a burden to bear.” **
*prayer of St. Francis of Assisi
** Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
