It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a white man in possession of a good fortune, must be successful in America. Upon drafting the Constitution, the first thing the Founders did was assemble into a small, elite committee while regarding themselves a “Committee of the Whole,” drawing up a document that would theoretically satisfy a myriad of groups within the United States. Then, they gave themselves the powers of “improvisation and debate and flexibility of action” to decide what they sought from the new government, ignoring the dissenting opinions of the minority (Charles Beard). The fatal flaw in starting the Declaration of Independence with “the unanimous Declaration” becomes evident when contrasted with its Constitution. Further adding to the flaw, it was drafted behind closed doors, and ratified by only one-sixth of male adults. When the Framers envisioned a country of justice, they interpreted justice through a narrow-minded and divisive lens. They included only citizens like them in their scope of equality while grossly disenfranchising those who did not fall into their class. A nation built upon juxtaposed ideals strikes a controversy strong enough from its birth to create rippling effects that are apparent centuries later, and remain prevalent in a society constructed to favor rich, white, male land-owners—a manifestation of its founders. Institutionalized ideas of patriarchal white-supremacy continue to undermine the egalitarianism promised to us in our Constitution. Since our initial rebellion from the British Crown, this country has not seen a revolt against the persistent injustices of its corrupt government; and “when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce [citizens] under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government” (Declaration of Independence). No longer can we wait for the white men to deliver us our freedom, we must take it for ourselves—the time for a second revolution is here.

A reciprocal power structure—in which the society created by white men actively serves to benefit them—prevails in the United States, and works against those who do not fit this singular mold of the American identity. As a result, women and minorities struggle with the interaction between their individual identity and their national identity; although the wording of the Constitution suggests their citizenship and equality, they find it difficult to explore their potential and advance in a society that perpetually renders them inferior. Regarding African Americans, specifically, questions of their personhood arose since their initial enslavement in the early 1700s. One of the most tragic ironies is the simultaneous praise we give the Founders for our country’s creation, and our failure to recognize the tool they used to achieve it: slavery. Unlike slavery in other countries, slavery in the United States centered around race. In drafting the Constitution, many of the men could not agree on the value of black folks, some asserting that they should be represented “equally with the whites,” while others still insisted they were “inferior to freemen” (Madison, Notes). Acknowledging their humanity yet denying them their “certain, unalienable rights,” the Founders refused to abide by their own manifesto of universal equality (Declaration of Independence).

            The tension between African Americans and white folks, then, is rooted in the latter’s historic racism that created a divide between the two groups. Instead of viewing implicit or explicit bias as the root cause of discrimination, using characteristics and traits to give meaning to racial differences, many Americans—like Nathan Glazer—argue the issue is due to the very label we actively use to distinguish the races. Proponents of this perspective ignore that the formation of the label functions as a representation of the Founders’ original intent. Labels only have as much meaning as we attach to them and, because of the superiority the Whites personally felt, they socially constructed labels to reinforce the distinctions they saw. The Framers posited that such innate differences between Whites and Blacks naturally resulted in a survival-of-the-fittest mentality that sought to “divide us into parties, and produce convulsions which [would] probably never end but in the extermination of the one or the other race” (Jefferson’s Notes on Slavery). Jefferson went so far as to make an analogy between how people prioritize certain breeds of dogs, using this premise as a “logical” explanation for the categorization of African Americans’ inferiority. By comparing them to dogs, Jefferson normalized the possession of humans to justify his view that whiteness inherently renders one as more desirable, associated with prized characteristics of which blacks are naturally deprived. The reduction of African Americans to property illustrates the overreaching implications of white entitlement; because whiteness has repeatedly been equated with power, those who benefit from this societal privilege have developed an obsession with maintaining their individual rights, even when they supersede the rights of other groups. Approaching racial differences with the mindset of fated doom, like Jefferson, displays the contentious attitudes entrenched in the Founders’ views. Without expanding their ideas of equality to include those beyond their immediate class, it proved impossible for the Founders to “secure a more perfect union” that was representative of the needs of all its citizens—an affliction that continues to disrupt the peace in this country (Declaration of Independence).

When these groups attempt to defy the social constructs of a society created for them by white men, the power structure in place counteracts their progress; thus, racism is a theme that bears repeating. In one of the most infamous Supreme Court cases in U.S. history, Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court repeatedly justified segregation in light of the Fourteenth Amendment, which decreed: “no state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.” Arguing that the law “could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to enforce social, as distinguished from political, equality,” codified attitudes of racism deprived African Americans of their justice at the most entrusted level of our judiciary government (Plessy v. Ferguson). This aversion to integration displayed white peoples’ reluctance to relinquish their power over Blacks, shunting them to the shadows of society. Legitimizing the reduction of Blacks to a state of subservience, the patriarchy becomes steeped in white fragility; in fearing the consequences of their own actions, white men time and again cling to their sense of entitlement to justify their disdain for anyone unlike them. Instead of recognizing the discrepancy in honoring a creed of equality while defending the Blacks’ enslavement, white Americans exist in a state of cognitive dissonance—while they admit the personhood of Blacks, they invent social distinctions between the races to uphold their superiority. As a result, this nation shifts from one of unity, in which “all men were created equal,” to one of division, where “blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind” (Declaration, Notes on Slavery). Consistently finding ways to manipulate the interpretation of the law to suit their entrenched biases, white men planted seeds of lasting racism that continue to subject African Americans to a plethora of obstacles while undermining their progress.

The American identity revolves around this overwhelming need for power, with those who possess it fighting desperately to remain in a position of dominance. Many draw upon religion to justify their exclusionary attitudes, integrating Church and State in order to align their personal beliefs with the nation’s policies. Dating back to proslavery arguments from 1845, James Henry Hammond uses the Christian Bible to ascertain slavery as the will of God in that it “is not only not a sin, but especially commanded by God through Moses, and approved by Christ through his apostles.” In fact, he endorses without reserve that “slavery is the corner-stone of our republican office” while repudiating as “ridiculously absurd, that much lauded but nowhere accredited dogma of Mr. Jefferson, that ‘all men are born equal’” (Proslavery). Picking and choosing which historical and religious traditions to follow, white men in power mold a society that satisfies only the needs of an elite minority while denouncing any backlash of the public majority. Because white slaveholders’ power became threatened, they nullified the voices of the tortured slaves and stripped them of their freedoms by systematically suppressing their culture; uprooting entire families; raping their women; punishing their defiance; and massacring their identities. Frederick Douglass, one of the freed slaves who became submerged in a warped view of the American identity upon emancipation, recounts his experience with one of the most severe slaveholders he encountered:

Mr. Severe was rightly named: he was a cruel man. I have seen him whip a woman, causing the blood to run half an hour at the time; and this, too, in the midst of her crying children, pleading for their mother’s release. He seemed to take pleasure in manifesting his fiendish barbarity. Added to his cruelty, he was a profane swearer. It was enough to chill the blood and stiffen the hair of an ordinary man to hear him talk.

Freedom in the United States exists on a double-sided coin—on the one side, limitless opportunities with unbarred sovereignty; on the other, subjugated existence with tainted liberty. Like so many African Americans who survived enslavement, Douglass adopted the motto “trust no man” to encapsulate the decades of oppression his people suffered at hand of the white man. Internalizing distrust and hostility, he saw “in every white man an enemy,” displaying the harsh, psychological impact of discrimination that has become integral to understanding the distinction between the White American identity and African American identity.

            Women similarly exist in a state of constant subordination that sustains their inferiority amidst a patriarchal society. Living within the constructs of traditional gender-roles that diminished their self-worth and shaped the way men thought of their capabilities, women—like African Americans—were deprived of self-exploration, forced instead to find their identity in their husbands. In marriage, “the existence of the very being or legal existence of the woman [was] suspended during the marriage, or at least [was] incorporated and consolidated into that of the husband” (Blackstone). A woman lost her sense of self, wholly absorbed by her husband’s dominion over her. She served as an extension of her husband, expected to operate solely under his protection as a “feme-covert” and destined to live in his shadow without challenging his position or considering her higher purpose. As “a person who is subject to the will of another,” Susan B. Anthony compared a woman to a slave; imprisoned by her husband’s power, a woman had no right to her own person—her husband became her master.

Unlike Anthony, who threatened she would cut off her right arm before she would ever “work or demand the ballot for the Negro and not the woman,” Sojourner Truth bridged the gap between women’s rights and civil rights.[1] Institutionalized ideas of sexism and racism coalesce to create a “double yoke of oppression” that places black women on a distinctly challenging path toward equality. Fighting as a woman of color, Sojourner Truth opposed gender biases in addition to racial biases. Although able to do the work of a man, she demanded she remain treated as the woman, and equal, she was: “I have ploughed, and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And a’n’t I a woman? […] I have borne thirteen [sic] chilern, and seen ‘em mos’ all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! And a’n’t I a woman?” Proving she could do the work of a man while fulfilling her motherhood duty as a woman, she insisted her value be recognized, and her rights given to her. Upon the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment, which extended suffrage to black men but not women, Truth—reminded of the confines of her gender—realized her splintered liberty; while she experienced emancipation as an African American, she remained enslaved by the patriarchy. Dividing the nation based on blatant discrimination, the matrix of oppressions continues to fester in a nation steeped in a fraudulent rhetoric of equality. Therefore, when “Black people get free, everybody gets free” (Black Lives Matter). Because equality demands intensive work from all demographics in a society, it becomes a matter of human rights. To uphold the sanctity of every life—not just the life of a white man—women and ethnic minorities alike must gain the freedoms endowed to them by the Constitution and, upon unification, humanity can prevail in “one nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all.”[2]

            Equality will not be given, however, we must fight for it. We must storm our government offices, read them our rights, and demand our justice. Progress requires action; no longer can we passively protest, begging the government to hear our cries. We must return to the fundamental aspect of the American identity—resistance. Thomas Jefferson and Malcolm X both exemplified revolutionaries who envisioned independent nations based upon their own ideals of freedom; however, unlike Jefferson, Malcolm X believed being “afraid of black nationalism” parallels being “afraid of revolution.” Jefferson’s exclusion of Blacks in his definition of equality displays the reason Malcolm X advocated for the Blacks’ withdrawal from the United States: a nation created as an extension of white nationalism cannot cultivate a society that protects the interests of people of color. Civil rights leaders with the goal of fostering unity within the nation’s borders, like Martin Luther King, Jr., aligned with powerful, white leaders, convinced they would help them on their quest toward equality. He and other peaceful protesters negotiated with some of the leaders of the economic community, petitioning the removal of humiliating racist signs from their store windows, but “as the weeks and months unfolded [they] realized that [they] were the victims of a broken promise. The signs remained. As in so many experiences in the past, [they] were confronted with blasted hopes, and the dark shadow of a deep disappointment settled upon [them]” (Martin Luther King, Jr). The only way to change the system is to overthrow it completely. Instead of participating in a society that seeks to control us, Malcom X urged not only Blacks, but all other minorities to completely sever their ties to the U.S. through means of revolution. If we remain complacent, Malcolm argues, we resemble house slaves whose identities intertwine with that of their white master’s. Convinced the white men will take care of us, we become blind to the prejudice that relentlessly suppresses us in three major ways: “Religion, the dominion of the human mind; Property, the dominion of human needs; and Government, the dominion of human conduct.” The Founders made property accessible only to those within their demographic to uphold their supremacy, and used religion to justify the creation of biased government policies. Power, used as a tool “to subdue, to crush, to exploit, the power to enslave, to outrage, to degrade” us for centuries, must forcefully be reclaimed (Emma Goldman).

            “The individual and society have waged a relentless and bloody battle for ages, each striving for supremacy, because each was blind to the value and importance of the other” (Goldman). This fight for dominance takes its roots in the individualistic society cultivated by our founders; conservative Americans today embrace a similar orientation towards the self that reflects a traditionalist approach to government. Ignoring the needs of the community, conservative philosophy provokes tension by clinging to an outdated self-determinism that handicaps minorities’ ability to receive support from their government. By refusing to alter the system, conservatives minimize the struggle of the oppressed, attributing their failure to advance to dispositional inadequacy rather than situational discrimination. Conservatives reek of misinformed patriotism, for, while they preach the tired trope of watered down unity, they refuse to acknowledge and uplift the marginalized and the oppressed. “In other words, some want unity without struggle,” relying on the complacency of abused communities to sustain their narrow vision of freedom (Black Lives Matter). We cannot give them this satisfaction.

            When the Founders promised us “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” they precipitated the demise of their newly established country. Immortalizing notions of equality and justice in the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson provided universal hope for the very people he sought to exclude—the only tool necessary for a rebellion to survive. Embossed on our Statue of Liberty, the duplicitous creed “Mother of Exiles” haunts those whose optimism has slowly diminished as a natural result of the other-American experience (Emma Lazarus).  As Emma Goldman, an anarchist and political activist, put it: “time and time again the people were foolish enough to trust, believe, and support with their last farthing aspiring politicians, only to find themselves betrayed and cheated.” This will not be our history. Revolution is bloody, hostile, and imperative in breaking the chains that seek to contain minorities’ resistance in a nation that imprisons their freedoms. We are at war with our government, and only one side can win—those whose power stems from subordination and hatred, and those whose power stems from opposition and unity. Which side of history will you be on?

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[1] Black Women & The Suffrage Movement

[2] “The Pledge of Allegiance”