Brian Hutchison of Walden University, USA (AKA Global Career Guy) focuses on how work and career development impact mental health, well-being, school engagement, and social justice. In this post he reflects on recent events in the USA, considers how we have got here and asks what needs to happen in the future to ensure social justice.   

The world is watching aghast as US citizens assault our democracy from within. The news media tells the story of Trump’s four-year assault on truth, media, and the levers of democracy. There is truth in this, yet, I see the story that’s playing out as one that started more than 500 years ago.

The authors of the Constitution of the United States are most often called the framers. As a son of the working class, I love this term. You see, in construction, framers are the ones who install the joists, bearing walls, and studs upon which a home is built. The frame holds the walls and the windows and the roof of the home. In other words, the parts of a home that one senses as safe and secure – the sense of home is built by the framers.

The Constitution is the frame of liberal democracy upon which the United States has built this nation we call home. I do believe that the framers gave the world something to emulate in the organisation, rules, and amendments of the Constitution.

The framers built the constitution on a foundation that could never support it

The foundation is the anchor to the earth that keeps the home in place and unmoving. A perfectly beautiful home can lose its value, even become unsafe, if it has foundation problems. A bad foundation can be hard to see from inside or even outside of the home. But when a foundation is bad, look out – repair is necessary or else the entire home may collapse. It is my belief that the foundation upon which the US liberal democracy was built is unsound and fear that Wednesday was a sign of impending collapse under the weight of our racist past.

Repairing the foundation of a home requires excavating beneath, anchoring it deeper into the earth so that it remains stable and safe. Repairing the foundation of US democracy will require us to dig into hard truths about indigenous peoples and persons of color. With these truths, we will need to build new structures to support and repair harms that stretch back more than 500 years.

What came before our democracy matters

The United States was formed on land stolen from indigenous people. The bounty of this land allowed it to flourish as a colony and helped it rebel against a monarchy to become a nation state. The natural resources needed to be harvested to build the economy of this nation – harvesting done largely on the backs of enslaved and indentured peoples, most notably from the African continent. The US and our liberal democracy that we know today exist in large part because of this plunder and enslavement.

I think about these two facts as the original sins of our democracy – sins codified in the Constitution of the United States. The rights and responsibilities of citizenship for “persons” and “people” are noted throughout the document but always at the expressed exclusion of slaves and indigenous peoples (as well as women). We carry this with us today.

As you watch the US from afar today, you can see the shadows of these sins in the segregated neighborhoods of our cities and towns. You see the shadow in the stark inequality of our schools. The shadow lurks in our prisons where we warehouse more humans than any other industrialized nation; and they are mostly people of color in a majority white nation. You see the shadow in sharper relief in our law enforcement.  As a recent article in Time magazine argues US law enforcement in the South can be traced back to slave catchers.

On Wednesday January 6, 2020 an organised, violent, and seditionist white mob desecrated the Capitol. The most recent reports suggest that they planned to find, hurt, and kill members of the US government. Their ability to do this is steeped in White Supremacy, their nonchalance while they did is oozing with White Privilege, and the meaning behind it is rooted in the original sins I describe in this article.

Our US liberal democracy will only be redeemed by repairing our foundation. This will be very difficult work but the US government must find ways to address those harmed in our past. Three ideas that I have to enfranchise those most harmed include:

1. Repatriate a fair portion of indigenous lands and resources to their peoples as negotiated with the leaders of their Nations.
2. Recognise and address (through negotiated reparations) the impacts of slavery on Black communities. Education, infrastructure, and employment zone investments are places to begin.
3. Reconstitute the systems of law enforcement and imprisonment in the United States to eradicate unequal treatment.

White supremacy has been enlivened in the United States by Trump and his minions. Honestly, I don’t have answers or ideas on how to directly address its insidious presence moving forward. Yes, all who invaded the Capitol Building should be prosecuted under the law but this will not root out the cancer that has been allowed to metastasize in recent years. There is much work to do.  

The United States constitutional framework is worthy of global adoration. Yet, the US system of democracy is one that must yet earn its designation as one of the great liberal democracies of the world. This can only be accomplished by seeking honesty and reparations for the original sins that have shaken our foundation.