The American Paradox
by Shannon Joyce Prince
"The
Founding Fathers were the most powerful and privileged
people in their society and had suffered no real human rights abuses."
When a nation declares its independence by stating that "whenever any Form of Government" abuses the rights to
"Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness" that it's the "right" and the
"duty" of the people "to alter or to abolish it" and pledges that it provides
"liberty and justice to all," one has to be perplexed when that nation's people
suffer the most egregious human rights abuses over the course of
centuries. Native American genocide as
well as black slavery and the anti-minority discrimination in housing,
employment, health care, education, and many other arenas that continues to the
present day mock the radical promises of the Declaration of Independence.
I believe that discrimination
remains a problem and that the anti-discrimination fight is impeded due to what
I call the American Paradox.
In severing ties with England, a
move that was considered treasonous, the Founding Fathers realized they would
have to carefully explain their act. As
white land-owning males, the Founding Fathers were the most powerful and
privileged people in their society and had suffered no real human rights abuses
- especially in comparison to indentured and poor whites, women, and
non-whites. Even their claim that they
were suffering taxation without representation was fallacious because in
English society all regions paid taxes but no region's concerns were considered
separately from any other. Because the
American colonies' issues were considered part and parcel of all English issues
and not singled out for special attention, the Founding Fathers claimed they
were being ignored.
The main concern of the Founding Fathers was minor
and fiscal - the enforcement of trade laws that had previously been laxly
monitored and taxes they found inconvenient.
But how could the most powerful people in society demand more power
still? By portraying themselves as
downtrodden. By using language
promising rights to the masses yet securing privileges only for the few, the
Founding Fathers mobilized people from all segments of American society to
fight for rights that would be given only to the most elite. After the United States of America became a
nation there were and remain two competing views of its status. The first view, that of the masses, expected
America to live up to its promises and grant all people the rights the
Declaration affirmed their Creator had endowed them with. The masses believed that if such rights were
not granted, they were not only entitled but compelled to follow the example
set by the Founding Fathers and described by the Declaration of Independence:
to alter or abolish the government.
"The Founding Fathers
mobilized people from all segments of American society to fight for rights that
would be given only to the most elite."
The second view of America,
however, was that of the elite. This
view of America insisted that the Revolution, having consolidated the rights of
the privileged, meant that the United States had finished its job. Since the elite conceived of revolutionary
rhetoric as a way to secure rights for the privileged, any movement for rights
among the masses was considered unpatriotic.
In this way, everything from abolitionism to women's suffrage to Civil
Rights, in short, any movement that attempted to alter the government in order
to grant the masses the rights promised to them by the Declaration of
Independence, the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, or the Pledge of
Allegiance, was considered a threat to the nation. To fight for life, liberty, justice, or equality, was framed as
being un-American and anti-patriotic.
The hypocrisy of the American
paradox was not only noted by the slaves being beaten to death and the Native
Americans being hunted down like wild animals, but even to other elite white
people. Thomas Paine, whose political
ideas led him to be called the father of the American Revolution, noted in his
article "African Slavery in America" "that many civilized, nay,
Christianized people should approve, and be concerned in the savage practice,
is surprising; and still persist, though it has been so often proved contrary
to the light of nature, to every principle of Justice and Humanity, and even
good policy, by a succession of eminent men, and several late
publications."
Thomas Paine said that, "One would almost wish" that
Africans would enslave thousands of whites to teach them how horrific slavery was. He called American slave-owners "pretended
Christians" and mocked the hypocrisy of Americans framing themselves as slaves
of the British with the following words, "With what consistency, or decency
they complain so loudly of attempts to enslave them, while they hold so many
hundred thousands in slavery; and annually enslave many thousands more, without
any pretence of authority, or claim upon them?...How just, how suitable to our
crime is the punishment with which Providence threatens us? We have enslaved
multitudes, and shed much innocent blood in doing it; and now are threatened
with the same. And while other evils are confessed, and bewailed, why not this
especially, and publicity; than which no other vice, if all others, has brought
so much guilt on the land?"
By fearing what Providence would do to a slave-owning
country, white, wealthy 18th century Thomas Paine said the same
thing as Jeremiah Wright - that a nation that practiced racial oppression
risked the damnation of God. Paine
labeled slavery the greatest of all sins and passionately condemned those who
would bemoan the inconveniences faced by the elite before the unfathomable
cruelty of slavery. Despite the fact
that many of the Founding Fathers were slave-owners, Paine called pro-slavery
individuals "enemies to their country."
He used incendiary language to emphatically state that a country that
wanted to be civilized and Christian must not own slaves.
"Any movement that attempted to alter the government
in order to grant the masses the rights promised to them was considered a
threat to the nation."
Paine was not alone in his sentiments. Abigail Adams, wife of President John Adams
and mother of President John Quincy Adams, wrote this to her husband
in a letter: "It always seemed a most iniquitous scheme to me to fight
ourselves for what we are daily robbing and plundering from those who have as
good a right to freedom as we have."
Founding Father, Secretary of the Treasury, and signer of
the Constitution, Alexander Hamilton, was an officer in the New York
Manumission Society that fought for the abolition of slavery in New York, the
right of slave children not to inherit permanent slave status, the end of the
slave trade, opposition to forced exportation of blacks from America, and
education for former slaves and their children. The New York Manumission Society boycotted pro-slavery newspapers
and businesses and even provided free legal service to free black people
illegally claimed as slaves.
Another member of the society was John Jay, Secretary of
Foreign Affairs and Secretary of State.
In fact, all the members of the society were white men, most of whom
were wealthy and extremely powerful.
While highlighting American hypocrisy was a practice eschewed by most of
the privileged, it often, incorrectly, was and continues to be seen as the
illegitimate whines of the trifling or the empty rhetoric of the politically
correct. But even in early America there were privileged whites who noted the
country's despicable double standards.
As white abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison put it, "If men are
justified in striking a blow for freedom, when the question is one of a threepenny
tax on tea, then, I say, they are a thousand times more justified, when it is
to save fathers, mothers, wives and children from the slave-coffle and the
auction-block, and to restore to them their God-given rights."
Of course, most of those who fought for universal civil
rights were among the powerless. One
such warrior is Daniel Shays, the leader of Shays' Rebellion. Daniel Shays was a white small time farmer,
who, like other small farmers were paying outrageous taxes to subsidize the
Revolution. Unable to pay the taxes,
such farmers were frequently locked in debtors' prisons and had their land
seized. Since land ownership was tied
to suffrage, a farmer who lost his land because he couldn't pay taxes that
funded a revolution supposed to bring democracy to all ironically lost his
right to vote. Since the Declaration of
Independence unequivocally stated that when a government was unjust, it was the
duty of men to alter or abolish it, Daniel Shays led his fellow farmers in non-violent
protest, but to no avail. So then
Shays, an officer during the American Revolution who retired rewarded for his
distinguished service, led his peers in an armed attack on a local armory. Their rebellion was quickly put down. Shays was bewildered. He said that his rebellion was the exact
same thing as the American Revolution, but he quickly learned that the rights
the Founding Fathers considered essential for themselves would be denied to the
poor - and that anyone who took the Declaration of Independence seriously was
going to be considered guilty of treason.
Shay barely escaped the death penalty.
"The rights the
Founding Fathers considered essential for themselves would be denied to the
poor."
As Founding Father Samuel Adams said, "in monarchy, the crime of treason may admit of
being pardoned or lightly punished, but the man who dares rebel against the
laws of republic ought to suffer death."
Adams had just articulated a dangerous sentiment. Because the American government called
itself a republic it was unimpeachable - despite the fact that the Declaration
of Independence requires the alteration or abolition of any form of
abusive government. The fact the
government wasn't really a republic and had entrenched racist, sexist, and
caste systems was irrelevant. The
American government could abuse any right it chose and still call itself a
republic - and any would-be patriot who sought to make America live up to its
promises risked paying with his life.
In other words, the most anti-American crime someone could commit was to
take the core documents of America seriously, follow their advice devotedly, or
demand fulfillment of the promises listed therein. Adams had put into words the American Paradox.
The American Paradox is the reason that a country that
promises justice for all can refuse reparations to the descendants of
slaves. The American Paradox is the
reason that the same Americans who fight for democracy abroad have contempt for
the efforts of people fighting against voting irregularities, voting
impediments, or uncounted/miscounted votes in this country. It's the reason that a country that
guarantees the right to life to all can allow the murder of unborn
children. It's the reason that one of the
gravest insults that can be hurled at any one who stands up for universal American
rights - from abolitionists to suffragists to union leaders to Civil Rights and
post-Civil Rights activists, is that they are being divisive - that they are
agitators or rabble rousers who threaten unity as though unity were more
important than moral goods.
Never mind that the Founding Fathers were divisive when they
took the steps that created the nation.
It is better to be unified and accept what's wrong than to take a stand
and make people choose whether they want to defend what's right. The American Paradox is the reason that when
Martin Luther King Jr. was challenged as being bad for the nation, he had to
remind the amnesiac nation of its own core document. The most radical thing Martin Luther King Jr. could say to
challenge the American government's own laws during his speech at Holt
Street Baptist Church was, "If we are wrong, the Supreme Court of this
nation is wrong. If we are wrong, the
Constitution of the United States is wrong."
"The most
anti-American crime someone could commit was to take the core documents of
America seriously."
The American Paradox is the reason that when researchers
stopped random people on the street with untitled copies of the Declaration of
Independence and asked for their opinion of it, person after person told them
that the Declaration was treasonous and must have been written by people who
hate America. At the beginning of this
nation's history, the Revolution was already seen through bifurcated
lenses. The powerful saw it as a way to
create a nation that would make the privileged even more privileged, while the
powerless saw it as making promises towards all people that would eventually be
fulfilled. For that reason there is a
strange definition of the patriotic/unpatriotic dichotomy. For the powerful, and the powerless swayed
by them, a patriot is someone who affirms the status quo and its inequities,
and to demand change so that citizens can receive the promises guaranteed them
by America's core documents is un-American.
Those pleas for justice are seen as anachronisms or demands for handouts
- as unreasonable, unfounded, and worthy of contempt - risible at best and
dangerous at worst.
In order to be considered good citizens, Americans are
required to unquestioningly worship the Founding Fathers (even when some of the
Founding Fathers themselves found them their peers to be hypocritical) as well
as to accept the status quo with all its inequity and injustice.
"For the powerful,
and the powerless swayed by them, a patriot is someone who affirms the status
quo and its inequities."
In order to justify a revolution, the Founding Fathers, a
group of educated, wealthy, white men described themselves as the pitiable
slaves of the British. But no one says
of them - but why didn't they focus on the good in their society? There's no Obama who asks of them why they
focused on what was bad about being part of Britain as opposed to what was
noble. No one tells the Founding
Fathers "love it or leave it" that if they didn't like life in the British
Colonies they should have gone elsewhere - and then proceed to name a host of
poorer or more violent places. For
protesting their three penny tax on tea, no one says that the Founding Fathers
should have stopped whining, moved on, taken responsibility for their actions,
or pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and simply succeeded in spite of it. Yet everyday, women and people of color who
face a host of more serious and more legitimate problems hear those exact
words. I note though, that women and
non-whites have never demanded a revolution - the only group to ever declare
its independence from the United States were slave-owners, another group of privileged people trying to
secure their privilege at the brutal expense of others - women and non-whites
don't even want to abolish the government even though they have more reason to
do so than the Founding Fathers did.
They simply want to alter the government to reflect the promises made in
the documents that created it.
In order to win a revolution, the Founding Fathers needed
the support of the masses to fight for the rights of the few. In order to create a country born of
revolution, they had to use language that guaranteed rights to all and insisted
upon a duty to end unjust governments.
And in order to preserve their privileged status in that country, they
had to start a tradition of punishing everyone who took them seriously. It didn't matter that people like Shay who
fought for the revolution and were impoverished by its taxes didn't get to
benefit from it. It didn't matter that
slaves whose labor made the country wealthy didn't receive its
protections. It doesn't matter that
women and non-whites still suffer to this day.
Being a good American means defending America as it is instead of
fighting so that it can blossom into what it was promised to be. It means that people who every day create
and defend inequality or simply stand passive before it, refraining from
engaging in socially conscious practices, can still wear a flag pin and be
considered patriots.
The American Paradox means that the most anti-American,
unpatriotic thing a citizen can do is to fight for American values.
Shannon J. Prince is a student at Dartmouth. She
can be contacted at [email protected].