About Connections: Love it or hate it, history is a map. Those who hate history think it irrelevant; many who love history think it escapism. In truth, history is the clearest road map to how we got here: America in the 21st century.
Salem, 1692: Witch trials were rife. Fourteen women and six men were burned at the stake until the wife of the governor was accused. Under that circumstance, the power elite reconsidered the prosecutions and put a stop to them.
During the Kavanaugh hearing, did you hear the door shut on #MeToo and #TimesUp?
If you are under 50 and, during your life, rights were ever-expanding and you thought it would be ever so: Did you hear the door slam? It is one thing to accuse Blacks and Hollywood liberals of sexual assault, and another to accuse a white man who went to the right schools and is a member of the club. In the hallway, one senator insisted, “We should not have to stand for this.”
In 1765, Jenny Slew, a white woman, sued because she had been enslaved. The slaveholder offered two defenses: “Are not all women slaves by nature?” and “A woman has no right at all to sue in her own name.”
As late as 1879, the rights and standing of a woman in the courts was still in question. The Supreme Court decided that it was up to the states to determine if women could serve on juries. In 1898, Utah was the first state to allow women on juries. By 1927, only 18 states allowed female jurors. In 1975 — yes, that’s right: 1975 — there were still some states that only considered a woman for jury duty if she submitted a written request asking to serve.
Rationales for precluding women from juries and from testifying were: Women were weaker and needed protection from harsher truths; were less rational and more emotional; and were therefore less able to be honest.
Not unlike Dr. Ford and other women fighting for the right to be heard and the dignity to be believed.
In 1857, the Supreme Court decided the Dred Scott case. They ruled Congress had no power to deprive slaveholders of their property. In the decision, Justice Roger B. Taney wrote that “Negroes were so far inferior that they had no rights which a white man was bound to respect.”
Further, the Supreme Court wrote, “persons of the African decent cannot be nor were ever intended to be citizens under the US Constitution.”
Pointing to Kavanaugh, Sen. Lindsey Graham asked, “Was that man supposed to be Bill Cosby?”
It was understandable when the image of Zina Bash making the “OK” sign now associated with the white supremacists went viral. It seemed to make manifest the underlying issue: the supremacy of the white male and the threat to that supremacy. What is worth subverting democracy is more than winning. It is defending themselves, their position and their way of life.
The threat to the white man may seem comparatively silly but, with growing Black and brown populations and women no longer content to be quiet and subservient, the threat seems real. Battles over immigration, sexual assault and the social safety net are about more than sensible population growth, crimes against women and the distribution of wealth. All those issues and voter suppression and the great political divide are actually about retention of power and maintenance of a way of life.
After the Kavanaugh hearing, one journalist wrote, “We are returning to the bad old days,” and Leonard Quart quoted Dos Passos: “We stand defeated.”
We were never a perfect Union, but we were always working to perfect it. And yet, for every amendment and piece of legislation that broadens rights and protections, there were actions to limit both rights and protections. Some say America is an idea: If so, what’s the big idea? Do we all believe we are created equal and endowed with inalienable rights? That majority rules and one person has one and only one vote? Or do we believe power should be in the hands of a few, and that few should look and think alike? There are many names for that form of government — none is democracy.
I am more certain of the will of the people than I am about the outcome of the vote. I hope we thwart foreigners and domestics who try to interfere.
