"God Damn America Day" Set For June 21st

A joke? Satire? From my research, I am afraid not.

But what I found here makes me all the more determined to have an open heart to each and every person I meet.

First, let me say I understand where the anger behind a call for such a day could originate. It proceeds from the disgust one feels when grasping the slaughter by our founders of indigenous Native Americans as they claimed this country as their own.

It emanates from the rage that comes from learning about the absolute and unmitigated evils of slavery, and of a strong and noble race of African-American people treated as things, as less than animals.

Anger is any intelligent and compassionate person's response to the knowledge of the dark history of a country born on the backs of slave labor, on their unforgivable abuse, and of the physical and emotional trauma of the horrors committed against them.

My great grandfather came from France to Ellis Island at the age of 8, my great grandmother, from Germany. I know of no ancestor of mine who ever owned slaves, yet I have wept with a deep sense of shame because of what people my color have done.

Although I was raised by a single mother, lived in the projects for some time, received food stamps and government cheese, and only finally went to college in my early 20's when I could afford to pay for it myself by working 50 hours a week...I am sure there have been times, even unbeknownst to me, when I have benefited because I am white.

But there have also been times when I have suffered terribly in ways no man, black or white, ever could because I am a woman.

As a woman, I could certainly call for a God Damn America Day, if so inclined. Cemetaries are full of women who have done centuries of back-breaking, menial, unpaid, unappreciated labor...without which this country could not have been founded; even as they were denied full and active particiption in a government which presided over them. While the men in charge debated over whether they had intelligence or souls, women lived entire lifetimes with no say over their own destinies, and with few choices laid out before them.

The earth is full of the bodies of women who have been obliterated by men who did so because they could. This is especially sad because I believe men were endowed with the honor of greater physical strength to protect those who are weaker, not as a weapon to employ against them. If senators and congressmen were raped, beaten, and murdered at the rate women of all colors are - by men of all colors - this country would declare a national emergency.

Women have but to open their eyes and take a look around this world, this country, to find plenty of things to be angered by, and to hate for, and to "God Damn America" for. But if we acquiesce, if we choose to hate, if we walk down that road of "us versus them" we are destroyed. We are doomed.

On December 20, 1908, the New York Times polled United States Senators and Representatives, as well as Presidents of universities and colleges to determine their attitudes about allowing women to vote.

Senator John W. Daniels argued:

I do not think that woman suffrage would do good to either the good women or the country...Every good woman ought to have a man to fight and vote for her.

Representative Richard Bartholdt of Missouri opposed allowing women the right to vote:

...because it will mean a disruption of our social system to drag women into the political arena, which certainly is not woman's sphere.

Representative Cordell Hull opposed women's suffrage under the patronizing and paternalistic guise of it being for their own good (got to give the guy credit for trying):

Let us have typical American homes, presided over by womanly women, and there will be continuously raised up a race of men in whose hands the destiny of this Republic and the interests of all its citizens -whether voters or not-can be safely intrusted. To thrust suffrage upon women would be a wicked imposition.

Oh, but Cordell, some us ladies enjoy wicked impositions.

You have to love the response given by Pennsylvania Representative A.L. Bates, who obviously had some experience with women:

I believe in allowing the ladies to do quite as they please, for in they long run they will anyway.

Those were some of the more polite arguments against allowing women to vote. Others objected to the idea because women menstruated. Some believed women did not and could not understand politics. Suffragists who wanted the right were characterized as militant and hysterical. Women were said to be emotional creatures, and therefore incapable of making a sound political decision. Last time I checked, having emotions was a human characteristic.

It was even argued that "the mental equilibrium of the female sex is not as stable as the mental equilibrium of the male sex".

In 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment, defining citizens as "male", was ratified. Also, the Fifteenth Amendment passed in Congress, giving the vote to black men. Women petitioned to be included but were turned down.

Despite the fact that many women had fought to abolish slavery, in 1869, Frederick Douglass and others did not return the favor and backed down from supporting woman suffrage to concentrate on the fight for black male suffrage.

The Nineteeth Amendment, allowing women to vote, finally passed in 1920, a full fifty-two years after black males were given the right. Is it possible that even though black males were regarded as inferior, incapable, unintelligent and less than human, that women have been held in even lesser regard?

Is it further possible, in light of the sexism directed at Senator Clinton, which would rightly never have been tolerated were it racism, that this attitude still exists today? I say it does. I think there are some endeavors we believe essentially require maleness, no matter what the color of that male's skin.

I don't know what you will be doing on June 21st, but I refuse to allow hate to preside in my heart. Let it be a day for each of us to sincerely reach out to someone of a different race or religion, sex or orientation. Listen to someone else's stories and concerns. Imagine how you might have felt, if you had the same experiences. Find common ground. Seek to understand and to be understood.

"We must learn to live together as brothers, or we are going to perish together as fools."
-- Martin Luther King, Jr

When you're finally up on the moon, looking back at the earth, all these differences and nationalistic traits are pretty well going to blend and you're going to get a concept that maybe this is really one world and why the hell can't we learn to live together like decent people?
-- Frank Borman

"A human being is a part of the whole that we call the universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest -- a kind of optical illusion of his consciousness. This illusion is a prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for only the few people nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living beings and all of nature."
-- Albert Einstein

"I keep my ideals, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart."
-- Anne Frank

"The World is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion."
-- Thomas Paine.