All of U.S. | A Story Of America That Survives Contact With Actual History
The arc of the universe doesn't bend towards justice - it bends because ordinary people have forced it into a more just shape.
Because here’s the thing about the bending of that moral arc: the universe has jack squat to do with it. It bends because calloused hands have forced it into a more just shape.
The eight hour work day, women’s suffrage, the dismantling of Jim Crow: these imperfect but real gains didn’t just ‘happen’. Every one of them was wrestled from a system that was set up to monopolize power, wealth, and dignity for a select few.
When ‘We The People’ was penned, it was understood at the time that ‘The People’ didn’t actually include everyone, coming as it did in an epoch where humanity itself was a graded category.
The selective equality being championed by the Founders rested upon a taken-for-granted dominator hierarchy with white male property owners at the summit, and everyone else bearing the weight below.
What most of the signatories to this compact didn’t anticipate is that those who were systematically excluded from the benefits of this arrangement might use its lofty ideals as a crowbar to pry open doors that were never meant for them.
For as long as there has been an America, there have been people who’ve refused to make peace with this vast chasm between stated ideals and reality.
That long struggle - and what it produced - deserves to be celebrated.