“All men are created equal.” What do you think of this quote? What does it mean to you? How do you think it’s meaning has changed throughout the years, with the evaluation of acceptance in America?
Well, in English we are talking about American Identity and learning about pathos, ethos, logos. Every day we have a writing assignment at the beginning of class. We answer some questions and reflect on them. Usually, I hate this type of assignment, but recently, I have become more intrigued by them. I realized that to complete it completely, you must dig deeper and look in between the lines of the questions. And that’s exactly what I did.
“All men are created equal” is a degrading term if you really think about it, analyze it. Think about when it was written, 1776, slavery was still occurring, women mostly stayed at home cleaning and preparing things for children or their husbands. They could not work or vote. So, to word it correctly, let's say, “all white, wealthy men are created equal.” Now, it blatantly leaves out men of color, working-class men, and not to mention 50 percent of the population, women. You know, the ones that birth humans out of their bodies. The ones that cook and clean and all that. “All white, wealthy men are created equal, but women and people of color are below us.” There we go! All fixed and brutally honest.
In that time, I do believe many people believed this to be true, everyone was equal in this new world, new land. So, why was this “equal land” built on the dead bodies of those to whom the land originally belonged too? How are people supposed to believe that all men are treated equally when most of the men that lived here were beaten by those above them.
With the history out of the way, let's decide how it contributes to today's world. if you think about it, it has changed. It might not seem like we are in a great position right now, but we are definitely better than we were when America started. We may be spiraling backward, but we were progressing before Trump became president.
Anyways…
Obviously, America is fragmented at the moment. And it will take a long time to fix it. We are in complete disarray due to the fact the president was fine with locking up kids in cages and tearing families apart. Not to mention, sending immigrants back to there home countries or not allowing people back into the U.S. Women are still not treated equally to men. And racism is very evident in today's society. Categorizing and fragmenting our country, originally known as a melting pot. What happened to the idea of America being interwoven, the idea that all cultures could coalesce into one big family. Adopting peoples beliefs.
Where, now, it sounds like such a distant idea, equality was once something that seemed achievable in the future. Now, it feels as if someone is yanking us farther and farther back from the light at the end of the tunnel. With each word that leaves our “presidents” mouth, the farther we are pulled back. When are we going to be pulled so far back we have to start over? That’s the real question. Will that happen, and if it does, when? How long until America is to broken to be fixed?
We are supposed to embrace our diversity, not let us break up apart. Now we are pluralistic, disparate. Separating at our roots, it seems. When, in reality, we need to learn to come together. It’s a shame about 31 percent of us can’t do that. Oh, well.
Hopefully, soon it will all get better. We just have to keep fighting.