I recently took on two challenges in the sphere of political
and cultural advocacy: understanding the roots of our democracy and national
laws, and learning to engage in meaningful debate based on this historical
knowledge. We often cite the phrase, “To know where you’re going, you’ve got to
know where you’ve been.” Yet we rarely seem to apply this
standard to our political and legislative systems.
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Sankofa: "Go Back and Get It" |
The aide, amid a short “yes it does—no it doesn’t” back and
forth, finally “challenged” me to provide “any” legislation that historically
did either of the things I argued. I’ll share the response I gave with you.
The Declaration of Independence
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are
created equal …” From the time this phrase was first penned, it has been
argued, as by Jack P. Greene in his 1976 text and inaugural lecture borrowing
its title from the phrase, that perhaps “no single phrase from the Revolutionary
era has had such continuing importance in American public life as [this] dictum.”
And yet, even as a phrase so integral to the framework of American democracy
that it worked its way into numerous state constitutions, it is one of America’s
great contradictions. Numerous figures both contemporary and historical point
to the hypocrisy of a Declaration phrase penned by men who themselves owned
slaves. The hypocrisy, in fact, became so evident that it became a key element
in the arguments of the Quock Walker cases that effectively abolished slavery
in Massachusetts. Today, many are familiar with the lyric from Lin Manuel
Miranda’s award winning Hamilton musical, sung by Angelica Schuyler: “We hold
these truths to be self-evident / That all men are created equal / And when I
meet Thomas Jefferson / I’m ‘a compel him to include women in the sequel!” A fundamental
document in the historical scaffolds of our nation penned equality on the page
yet denied it to two key groups (at least) in practice. This, I argued with the
legislative aide, arguable wrote legislative lip service into the democratic
framework of our legislative systems.
The Emancipation Proclamation
I admit that by the time we reached the example of the
Emancipation Proclamation, my conversation with the aide had become moderately
less “friendly” in nature. But after some debate on whether legislative lip
service remains “legislative lip service” if it is, as the aide noted, later
amended out of its error, I digressed from the Declaration (and a brief
discussion of legalized slavery under the 13th Amendment, which the
aide firmly denied) with a simple question: “What did the Emancipation
Proclamation do?”
“It freed the slaves,” answered the aide. He seemed almost
grateful for the soft ball, adding that it was a “great example” of the power
of the American government to make positive change for its people through
legislative action.
“It would be,” I replied, “Except … who did the Emancipation Proclamation free?”
“The slaves.”
“Which slaves?”
“What do you mean, which slaves?" he asked, sounding frustrated. "All the slaves. It ended
slavery.”
In fact, the Emancipation Proclamation, in its precisely
calculated language, did no such thing. The Proclamation neither outlawed
slavery nor granted citizenship to the slaves who would have been “liberated”
as confiscated goods, in addition to land, only from those states who remained
in rebellion after a certain date. Did, I pondered allowed, the aide know that,
by its own verbiage, had the rebelling states rejoined the union they may have
kept their slaves? Did he know that the only immediate impact of the
Proclamation was for slaves who ran away to a free state … or that they could
have been resold had they fled to a Union slave state? Was he aware that
Lincoln himself wrote that could he “save the Union without freeing any slave” he
would do it? (To be fair this, in itself, is not a full assessment of Lincoln’s
recorded thoughts on the matter. It does, however, reveal the ultimate
clarification of the emancipated slaves as means to an end, rather than the end
itself.)
“I would have to review the text myself,” admitted the aide. By this point he sounded nearly finished with me. “But, I’m pretty sure you’re wrong about that.”
I encouraged the aide to do just what he suggested he would:
go back and read the text, among others. And through this recommendation, I
came to the true crux of the matter.
Sankofa
We cannot know where we are going, as individuals or a
nation, unless we are willing to critically look at where we have been. This
idea is captured beautifully in the word Sankofa.
Sankofa is a Ghanaian phrase and symbol (adinkra) that translates, “Go
back and get it.” In essence, it means that as we move forward and learn as
time passes, we must never forget the past that has paved the path for this
progress.
And yet, in our society, we too frequently seem to put
blinders on when it comes to the past. History seems to sneak up on us as it
repeats itself. From the modern civil rights battles of the LGBTQIA community
that call forward the memory and legacy of the 1960’s racial civil rights
struggles, to the actions of the current administration that for many harken
back to the Nixon era, we seem to see yet struggle against the parallels
between the present and our past. We forget that historical battles are
cyclical, mirrored through time, reflected through a lens that has seen this
all before. We forget that America has always been “the great experiment,” and
so forget that experiments always—always—rely on repetition: we try, we succeed
or fail, and we go back to try the process again with new variables.
It worries me that legislative aides, and legislators, at
the seeming top of our governmental hierarchy can so easily fail to see, refuse
to see, or simply dismiss, the history we draw from to move forward as a
country. As I shared with him, an easily forgotten past only leads to turmoil in our present society. A government that does not look back toward the full history that has led to its current point of action, or look forward toward the history its actions will create, is not acting in the interest of its people. And a government that denies history creates distrust and fear among the people. And government cannot thrive when the state of the union is fear.
It worries me that even among those of us who advocate for change
we seem to more frequently lose sight of the lessons of the past that could
make or break the revolutionary actions we fight for. We, too, bear great responsibility to the past. It both shapes us,
and is shaped by us into progress. Just as the legacy laid down by my forebears
has paved my developmental path, we as a nation owe it to our own history to
never forget where we came from.
We owe it to our past as much as we owe it to
our future … because one cannot live without the other. As we move forward, as
we fight our great fights and struggle toward the ever more perfect union, let
us remember to go back, fetch the lessons we have left in the past, and bring
them forward to our present, to better craft our future.
Se wo were fi na wosankofa a yenkyi ... It is not wrong to go back for that which you have forgotten.
*****
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nice post
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