NCrissieB's diary today motivated me to write this diary, which is on a topic I've been thinking about for some time.
It is a variation on the story of the blind men and the elephant. You know, the one where several blind men are asked to identify an elephant and, because each one can only touch part of the elephant, fail to get it right.
We are all raised in this country with the mantra that, if you work hard, anything is possible in America. The President made that idea an important part of his campaign of hope.
And his election is certainly a big boost for this ideal. However, we were not born as a nation with this idea fully formed. In fact, the idea that any human being in America has a chance to become successful politically or otherwise is only of relatively recent vintage.
Those who have been excluded from full participation in American life have had to struggle, sometimes in the face of violence and even murder, to become full citizens. Persons of African descent, persons whose ancestors came from outside of Northern Europe and women, regardless of who their ancestors were, are examples of groups who have had to engage in this struggle.
But I want you to notice the use of the passive voice in the last paragraph: "Those who have been excluded...." You will often encounter the passive voice in discussions about the history of inequality in this country. This is because those who had the power to exclude have always done a masterful job of distracting the majority away from the ways in which they exercised that power.
I am not suggesting here that the minority group which has controlled political and economic life in this country engaged in some sort of conspiracy. I am suggesting instead that, like any group which has power, they had a tendency to see themselves as the natural possessors of that power and that, therefore, excluding everyone else from it was only for the best.
I also don't think that the failure of all those who have been on the outside of political and economic power in this country to identify this minority group as the target of their efforts to change the system should be too surprising.
The minority group I am talking about is the group of men who fall into the category of "white." We usually don't think of these men as belonging to a minority, but that I think is because we associate the term "minority" with a lack of power, not a monopoly on power.
But the men who qualified as "white" have always been a minority in this country and have always monopolized power. This is clear if you do the math. Women are a slight majority of the adult population (I have seen percentages of between 52-54%) This means, obviously, that men are less than 50% of the population.
Persons of African descent have been between 10%-13% of the U.S. population. This means that another 5-6% (i.e. the males of that population) has to be deducted from the group of males eligible to hold political and economic power, which drops this minority group to around 45% of the population. If you also deduct the males who belong to other groups who were ineligible to belong to the "white" group (e.g. Latinos, Asians, Native Americans, etc.) the "white" male group shrinks further.
Now, deduct openly gay males. Also, (at least until the middle of the 20th century) deduct non-Protestants. Finally, if you want to get an accurate idea of who had the ability to attain power in this country between its founding and around the first third of the twentieth century, deduct anyone who was not an "Anglo-Saxon."
How much of the population is left after you deduct all those people? 40%? Less?
If we look at our history this way, it seems to me that a natural line of reasoning would be to argue that it has always been inherently unfair for this minority group to resist the opening of our society and its opportunities to all human beings. And, it should follow from this that the majority in this country could easily set an agenda to change the power structure and achieve the kind of open society we say we want. After all, at least now the ballot is a weapon to fully achieve what should have been done in the beginning.
But, we have not had a "Majority Citizen" movement in this country. Instead, we have had the women's movement, the civil rights movement, the gay liberation movement, La Raza, the Catholic Church, etc. In other words, we have seen the majority approach this problem of minority rule from many different angles. Why?
I suggest that, with some exceptions, it is because members of the various excluded groups possess one, or more, attributes of the minority.
For example, the women's movement has been dominated by "white" women. The minority group in power, the straight, male, WASP (StramWasp?) used "whiteness" as one of the tools to limit access to power. So, whether consciously or not, "white" women who can clearly see and feel the consequences of their exclusion on account of their gender, do not feel the consequences of making "whiteness" a hurdle one has to overcome in order to achieve in this country. And they have little incentive to give up the advantage that the racial system gives them.
Similarly, the males of every other excluded group can see that the StramWasps use maleness as a tool to limit access to that power. So, like the white women, they have an incentive to eliminate the aspect of American life which prevents them from achieving power but seek to retain the aspect which gives them an advantage. Again, this is not to say any of this is or was conscious. If you are born into a system where you only experience things in a certain way, it is difficult to imagine them differently.
The problem with the strategy of all of these groups is that failing to attack the system of exclusion in general prevents them from seeing themselves and acting as the majority.
If, instead, the organizing principal was that possession of a trait irrelevant to doing a particular job (e.g. president, pilot, police officer, hedge fund manager) cannot be used to exclude a person, then the majority has something to unite around and the minority has nothing to answer with.
This approach brings "white" persons who possess xx chromosomes, those whose ancestors were from Africa, Asia, or who were living here before Europeans colonized the continent and those who have or want same-sex relationships under the same umbrella. The minority has excluded each one of them from full participation as American citizens on account of some aspect of themselves which should never stand in the way of their acting on their talents.
One last comment. I think that there is a tendency among those whom the SwamWasps have historically excluded to demonize "whites" "males" or "white males." I think that tendency comes from a feeling of powerlessness more than from anything uniquely evil about whites, males or white males. As I said above, any group which has power wants to hold onto it. That, I think, is a human trait, not a white male trait.
And, ironically, I think this tendency to demonize, as if either whiteness or maleness is the problem, contributes to the divisions which prevent the majority in this country from acting like a majority.
However, now that I have laid it out so clearly, I am sure there will be a seismic shift in consciousness and these problems will all be solved in the next couple of elections cycles. :)