You may have noticed that the USA is in one of its periodic phases of political hysteria. This cycle feels like it’s accelerated, though maybe it hasn’t; it may feel as though reactionary conservatism vs. progressive humanism has been more virulent during my lifetime simply because it’s my lifetime.
I was born in 1965, the year the Voting Rights Act passed. This year, the VRA has been gutted by the gopmaga faithful on the Supreme Court. As a direct result, several states of the former confederacy are rushing to implement measures meant to mute the voices of the poor, naturalized immigrants, and people of color.
Whether it’s blatantly partisan redistricting or more insidious laws like the one currently pending in the North Carolina legislature, these efforts have only one motive: sending the US back to 1850, when the only people who had the right to vote were white property-owning men.
Let’s not forget that in 1850s America, “property” included “human beings who are not white.”
A Latino-oriented education support organization in my community put out a call recently requesting assistance in building a library for the kids and parents who come in for homework, tutoring, language acquisition, or simply to read in a comfortable, safe place. As anyone who reads this blog knows, I’m a huge fan of books and reading. The excuse to buy actual books (thereby also supporting our local indie bookshop, Highland Books) was thoroughly welcome. I’ve already delivered nearly 40 titles via a book drive at UUTC, my sister’s church, and have another box ready to go as soon as I find out where and when to deliver them.
I’m reading quite a few of these books, too. Lovely children’s books (fiction and nonfiction), young readers and teen-oriented historical or biographical fiction, or nonfiction. As always, references in one book often lead to other books.
One of the things I’ve acquired to give to this organization is a bound copy of a late 1860s speech by Frederick Douglass commonly called ‘Composite Nation.’ Since a bound copy exists, I had to get it for this group.
Here are a few brief passages worth considering.
“In whatever else other nations may have been great and grand, our greatness and grandeur will be found in the faithful application of the principle of perfect civil equality to the people of all races and of all creeds, and to men of no creeds.”
“All great qualities are never found in any one man or in any one race. The whole of humanity, like the whole of everything else, is ever greater than a part. Men only know themselves by knowing others, and contact is essential to this knowledge.”
“Trust is the foundation of society. Where there is no truth, there can be no trust, and where there is no trust there can be no society.”