Old Principles; New World
I'm writing from Washington DC this week, a city famous for a lot of old, white guys, of which I am reminded every few blocks by a statue or plaque or place name.
These old white guys created the first amendment, granting freedom of religion. Their view of religious diversity was limited in comparison to view today, and some argue that to read their writings in context is to vastly limit the definition of "religion" to what the Founding Fathers thought of it.
But the Founding Fathers were pretty clear they were talking in universal terms. The lack of references to specific religions hints at this. Also, if you really want to read the documents in context, then you have to think of Judaism and Islam being radically strange, yet still accepted. If they accepted the radically strange then, why should we not accept what we consider radically strange now?
Comments
Hello, Catherine:
I’ve enjoyed your blog, and share your perspective on the sweeping personal freedoms guaranteed to us by the Bill of Rights.
I do, however, find the phrase “old, white guys” enormously offensive, and think that it’s truly at odds with what you profess to believe.
I happen to have been born white and male, characteristics shared by 39.4% of the American population. I am a kind and decent man who has spent his life promoting values of tolerance and mutual acceptance. I marched against racism in the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s. I fought for acceptance of gays long before it became fashionable. I went out of my way to mentor and hire young minority and women lawyers in the 70’s and the 80’s, and certainly paid a professional price for doing so.
I also spent four years in the army in the 1960’s because my country told me it needed me to defend it.
I’ve defended (as a lawyer) a wide variety of criminals – male, female (several of my female clients murdered their children), black, white, brown, gay and straight, clumsy amateurs or clever professionals. Those experiences have me that there’s simply no validity in condemning huge percentages of the population because of irrelevant personal characteristics such as race, age, sex or sexual orientation.
A single black criminal doesn’t make all blacks felons, nor a single woman thief make all women larcenous.
And the fact that there may have been white males centuries ago who were slave owners, or monopolists, or robber barons doesn’t make every white male fair game for your sarcasm and prejudice.
By your use of the pejorative “old, white guys,” you obviously don’t share that conviction. Rather, as do many in our society, you apparently promote tolerance and understanding only of groups of which you approve.
I suspect you’re one of those feminists who believe that the problem with “old, white men” is not that they may have done terrible things but simply that they were white and male. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that sort of feminist condemn bad behavior by white males but embrace the same behaviors when they’re displayed by females or gays or racial minorities.
Gotta message for ya, Catherine. Prejudice is prejudice, racism is racism, sexism is sexism, NO MATTER WHAT. There is no “reverse discrimination,” only “discrimination.”
Clothing your racial and sexual prejudices in trendy feminist terminology doesn’t make you any less of a racist and a sexist, and any less of the sort of person who makes living in this society more difficult for the rest of us.
Thank you Haifisch, well said. At least she didn’t call them “old, dead white guys…”. One might also refer to Gerald Gardner as an old, white guy. (Dead, you know.)
JM
“But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God.” – Thomas Jefferson
Why do you find me describing the Fouding Fathers as “old white guys” to be perjorative? They were, in fact, old, white, and male. Nothing wrong with any of those facts. They are simply facts.
And I brought it up in part because certainly people seem to think that the lack of diversity 200 years ago implies the Founding Fathers wouldn’t have liked the diversity of today.
It has nothing to do with feminism. And the idea of me being racist against white people is absurd, since I’m generally the whitest person in the room.
Hi Catherine,
I am totally cool with the term old white guys
As a person who has nearly achieved “old white guy” status myself, I find myself offended–not by your comment, but by the fact that to get on U.S. paper money you have to be male, white and dead. Sparta proved thousands of years ago that an elite class is as surely enslaved as its helots; inequality doesn’t work for anyone, including, ultimately, the supposed “ruling” class.
America is still an imperfect experiment in freedom and citizen participation, and the power-sharing part of it is under particularly intense attack in the early part of this new century. We haven’t achieved the Utopia the founders sought, but we’ve come closer than anyone else ever has and that’s why American patriotism (NOT jingoism) is still intellectually defensible–even by non-old, non-white non-guys.
I’m also not offended by the term “old white guys.”
Just the facts maam. Ben Franklin lived into his 80s in a time when most people didn’t live that long.
Would it have been more acceptable to say “old caucasion guys?”