Independence

Happy Fourth of July, everyone.

This morning I fell down a Twitter-hole, but for once I don't have any regrets. Somebody posted the Langston Hughes poem, I, Too, and then I wanted to read Whitman and then I found some new poems, and all of them were celebrating America and recoiling from the broken promises and rejoicing in the hope of promises one day kept.

(To fall down the same rabbit hole, check out https://www.poetryfoundation.org/collections/145066/july-4th-poems and https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poems?field_occasion_tid=1812 and don't forget to read this brilliant, heartbreaking speech by Frederick Douglass: http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/what-to-the-slave-is-the-fourth-of-july/)

While Angelica Schuyler sang it best thanks to Lin-Manuel Miranda's Hamilton:
https://mrbrentweaver.wordpress.com/angelica-schuyler-hamilton/

(key passage at 1:35)... I have always felt, well, confused by my role as a woman in America.

When the Founding Fathers said that "all men are created equal" they did not mean it, and nor did they expect anyone else to believe it. Thinking people knew what they meant. Men was not code for humankind, although we like to pretend that that was their intent. No, men meant men, and it did not mean women. Men meant white-Christian-men-of-property-and-class, land owners, the educated. Those who fell outside of those descriptions, by gender or skin tone or finances, were not considered fully human. If a woman was lucky enough to be born white and wealthy, and have a good marriage with a husband who valued her opinion, she might expect to have some influence within her own household...but even this feels optimistic and slightly foolish to me. Women knew their place, and even when they were allowed to speak up,speaking up meant they needed to tread softly and tiptoe around the male egos in their lives. I know this is true because I read history, but also because though we've had vast improvements, movements like #MeToo have proven, if nothing else, that women are expected to take what is dished out to them or else; certainly that has been my experience. Modern women are expected to celebrate their equality, but are penalized for asking for raises; we are taught to come home from work and make dinner and clean up and care for the children and to express undying gratitude to our husbands if they deign to put a few dishes in the dishwasher or change a diaper or read a bedtime story, nevermind that there are pots that need to be scrubbed and lunches made and school paperwork to complete and, well, you get the idea. How many women have heard a voice call from the sofa to the kitchen, "Oh, did you need something?" in oblivion of the truth of how dinner lands on the table each night?

Of course, it was worse for women who did not have the advantages that the founding fathers assumed when they wrote so beautifully about equality. Sally Hemings was three years old when the document was written; thirteen years later she would be impregnated by thirty-six year old widowed man (he was married to her half sister, by the way; Sally Hemings was born a slave but was 3/4 white) and Declaration author Thomas Jefferson in 1789. I wonder what it felt like to Ms. Hemings to hear Jefferson speak of equality and the pursuit of happiness, when she was a slave and a concubine who had to fight for the freedom of her children and who was forced, because of "propriety" to hide in back rooms?

Our American roots are full of hope, grand ideals, optimism, eloquence, and the promise of joy, but they are also home to mold and rot. The same people who declared our right to a pursuit of happiness so solemnly and hopefully did not see most people as people.

I recognize my own privilege.  My race, class, and education protect me from many of the sorrows of the world. When my blue eyed, fair skinned daughter goes out into the world, I know that police will leap to her aid if she requires it; I expect to be admitted to any place I care to go without a second glance. I can jaywalk without fear (suspecting that a "oops, sorry Officer!" and a smile will be enough). And yet, because my sex means that I am less likely to hold high position, to receive the salary I deserve, to be acknowledged at the conference table or the political position, or to walk down the street free of harrassment, I have a hint of what it might mean to have further erosions into my sense of equality. Because I know the bitterness of not being quite equal, I can speculate what someone without my privilege might experience, and I feel rage.

Rage.

Not a slight disappointment, not frustration, not confusion, but white-hot-burns-the-world-to-ash RAGE.

How dare we do this to people? These are somebody's children. I'm a mother, and there is almost nothing I would not sacrifice for my daughter's safety. How do parents bear it when they send their black boys into the world, knowing that they can be shot for holding up a phone, that the police will be called if they mow the neighbor's lawn? How can they bear it? I know that they cannot. I can feel the bile in their throats as they are forced to go about their business, eating and sleeping and working and trying, knowing that this is how the world works.

When I got married, my father told me that he was glad I was marrying a white person. Even then (another lifetime ago), I was shocked, horrified. I often contemplate the comment, which he made in a thoughtless, offhand, unimportant way. I look at my own daughter, and contemplate her far-off, future spouse, and I think of his words, and how it felt to hear his words, and what I might say to my daughter near her wedding day. Repulsed by his sentiment, I see it differently. I see that my daughter might marry a black or brown man (or woman - why not?), and that my grandchildren might have dark skin, Afros, slave heritage. I imagine the love that I feel for my daughter and the love that I will feel for my grandchildren, and I imagine holding these future, beloved grandchildren and staring into their beautiful, dark eyes, and though these children are imaginary, I want to protect them with every fiber of my being. I feel fierce and protective of my daughter, and of her someday children, her someday spouse. I want to look my grandchildren in the eye and tell them that I have helped to shape that the world that they live in, so that they feel safe and loved and welcome.

So, even though it's not personal, it's personal. I have no idea who (or if) my daughter will marry; she is a high school student with hopes and dreams but with no clarity about the future and she's still working out high school romance, let alone life-long partnership; only time will reveal her path, her love, her family. Still, the possibility exists.

America was created in great part by Thomas Jefferson, by Martha Jefferson (lacking formal education, a widow already when she married Jefferson at 24, half sister to slaves), by Sally Hemings and her six children from a man who owned her and never married her, though they lived together. Thomas Jefferson's choices were the ones that shaped the nation, but Martha and Sally's stories are just as important, true, and relevant to the America that we live in today.

Martha loved her husband, the documents show. Her husband, who crafted the nation with no place for women, loved her back, perhaps never even considering the idea that his beloved wife might be his equal, deserving of equality in the workplace, the voting booth, the court, the bedroom, the home.

It is the tension between Jefferson's words and actions that continues to define the tensions in society today. We are a country of great ideals that has failed to live up to those ideals. We are optimists; we like the ideas behind the words, and so we continue to refer to them, to hold up the words as proof of what we're capable of. The words offer comfort, a child's story before bedtime, soothing, hopeful, but because we are not children, we know that the author of those words gave them as fiction, not the non-fiction that we long for. We know that the phrasing, though poetic, intentionally leaves out a minimum of 50% of the population. We know what he said, but we know what we know, and that his words are tinted more with politeness than truth. I do not think that Jefferson likely changed a diaper, and I wonder if he knew a woman's anatomy well enough to be a decent lover, or if his wife was required to put up with his bumbling because that was just expected. Did he see his wife as an equal in intellect and potential, or simply as a person placed on the earth to make his own life more pleasant?

When Thomas wrote "all men are created equal," I wonder if Martha thought, "Me, too." I wonder if Sally thought, "Me, too." I wonder if these women were bitter when they heard the words, or if they shook their heads and thought, "if only you really understood!" I wonder what their children thought? I wonder if Martha's children knew, in that way that children have of knowing, that Sally's quarters were connected to Thomas'. I wonder if the Brady-bunch style children saw their family resemblances as sibling-cousins. I wonder how Thomas treated his second-six children behind closed doors, and if there were ever Christmases around the tree with all twelve of his children. (I think I know the answer to this, as do you, but the history books do not reveal the answer.)

While the #MeToo movement is about men's sexual aggression toward women (and, just for the record...#metoo), I think it's an apt description of the political uprisings we see now, in 2018, from those who believe in Jefferson's words and see the obvious disconnects to how we actually run our nation, our communities, our businesses, our homes. Our country will continue to be a hot mess of poverty, racism, sexism, and the cruelty and injustice that arise from those horrific truths, until we can reconcile the irreconcilable. Our country was founded in beautiful ideals, but the people who wrote the words down and crafted the ideals didn't really mean what they said.

All men are created equal. Me, too.

Footnote:
A simple, short explanation of the relationships between Thomas, Martha, and Sally is here: https://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/jamie-stiehm/2010/12/06/thomas-jefferson-and-his-women . While some sources declare only Jefferson's white family (!) as here: http://faculty.montgomerycollege.edu/gyouth/FP_examples/student_examples/truc_huynh/family.html others more accurately present his entire family, which, should you be wondering, has been confirmed via DNA testing. Monticello now acknowledges Hemings' role in Jefferson's life, and her quarters have been unearthed (next to Jefferson's bedroom...of course) at Monticello: https://www.monticello.org/sallyhemings/ .