jic: Daniel Jackson (SG1) firing weapon, caption "skill to do comes of doing" (Default)
jic ([personal profile] jic) wrote in [personal profile] butterfly 2004-08-08 05:32 am (UTC)

Time to do your research, sugar. That, or clarify exactly to which founding documents you refer.

The Declaration of Independence makes no mention of race or slavery.

The US Constitution and its amendments make no mention of race or slavery except to disallow slavery (Amendment XIII) and to disallow restricting the right to vote based on race (Amendment XV)

Racial inequity was introduced with the Naturalization Act of 1790 (see essay). As this essay points out, "The fact that the United States of America was committed to liberty yet rested, to a considerable extent, on slavery was more than an irony or contradiction." But the hypocrisy is on the part of the authors, not the documents themselves. I think you'll like the essay.

My point is not that there was no hypocrisy, just that the hypocrisy was not inherent in the documents. If our history were judged solely by those DoI and the original US Constitution and Bill of Rights, there would be no history apparent. Not until reaching the 13th and 15th amendments would one realize that reality did not match the ideal originally presented.

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