Voting and American History
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The course of American history can be read as an attempt - not without set-backs - to enfranchise an ever-increasing number of our citizens with the full rights fought for by the founders of our nation. The country was, as we have all been told, founded on the principles that we are each born with certain rights that are inalienable, that cannot be taken from us. But this has, of course, not always been true. Black Americans were often denied freedom. Women have made significant gains in improving their status in the last two generations. Gays are still fighting for the right to be seen as "normal". Each of these struggles - from the Civil War to the fight for voting rights for women to the current spate of marriages of gays and lesbians at San Francisco City Hall is part of a larger struggle to define who is entitled to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness", a part of the struggle of what constitutes American identity.If we look at the different groups that have struggled to have the same rights as those in the majority we see important similarities as well as differences among them. One of the most important similarities is the desire of members of oppressed groups to have access to the formal mechanisms of power. For non-whites and women, this struggle for generations took on the form of getting the vote or of being able to vote in safety. Black men were of course granted the legal right to vote during the Civil War, they often could not do so in safety in the Sou
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ught about through peaceable means.
It would be a perfectly natural response for women (who could until recently be legally raped by their husbands and who still earn 70 cents on the dollar to what men in comparable positions make and are called "chairman" and "foreman") or blacks (who were forced to sit in the back of the bus for generations after the Civil War was supposed to free them from a second-class existence) or gays (who are more often the victim of hate crimes today than the members of any other group) (http://www.usdoj.gov) to try to create their own structures, to refuse to participate in American political life at all. And indeed, some have done so: Malcolm X, for example, argued that African-Americans would never be treated as full equals within the American political framework and so must choose a revolutionary path if they wished to find a meaningful and equal existence for themselves. But most people - from Sojourner Truth to Susan B. Anthony to the mother of Matthew Shepherd - have chosen to work within the framework of the American legal and political system, believing that the system is powerful enough to protect all Americans, and flexible enough to bear the changes necessary to expand the basic rights of ci
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Approximate Word count = 1280
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)
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