Ideas For Democracy:  Goal #12

Equal rights, race relations, replace with ethnicity rights and relationships.

 

Citizens who want real democracy will actively support this policy and vote for trustworthy candidates who actively support this policy.

 

IFD - policy:  Personality profiles can be used constructively to identify persons suspected of types of criminal acts.  Similar tools of psychological science should be used to identify persons that are likely to be competent and professional police officers.  No one given a badge and a firearm should be venting anger or resentment while performing their duties to enforce the law and protect the public safety.  Self-control and a proper understanding of the public trust are essential.  A police department must not be used to raise operating funds for a municipality through arrests and the imposition of fines. 

 

Due to America's unique economic history and the period of an unusually cruel and destructive form of slavery, African-Americans must be enabled to conduct monitoring of law enforcement and business practices whenever they detect signs of racial profiling, overt racial discrimination, economic oppression or voter suppression directed against a racial or ethnic group.

 

The most  American of all Americans:

Because Africans were brought to North America involuntarily to perform menial labor in agriculture and household servitude, since as early as 1620, the Caucasian European majority of the United States of America have made the African-Americans the most American of all United States citizens.  They were invited or forced to come here to work in an extreme institution of slavery, and by and through that institution they were deprived of the customary and usual records and signs of a human individual.  They were deprived of their birth records and family histories.  They were deprived of a surname or family name.  They were deprived of normal family relationship rights, such as the right of a parent to control and raise their own children, and the rights of married spouses including the rights of family members to reside together or apart as they so choose.  Because of these destructive and unjust practices all African Americans who are the descendants of African slaves in America are in fact the most American of all United States citizens.  They are the most specifically "American" because their previous ethnic and biological heritage was taken from them against their will.  They cannot name what the European Americans would call "the old country" or their society or tribe of origin.  They cannot communicate with relatives from their country or tribe of origin, and they cannot go back to visit their former homelands.  They cannot say, as European Americans can say "I am Franco-American, or I am Italian-American, or my ancestors are German or Polish."  Since they cannot readily retrieve their ethnic origins, they are forced to identify themselves as "Black" or African-American, unlike the Caucasian Americans who are not forced to identify themselves only in the restricted sense as "European-American" or "White-American" or just "White."  The Caucasian majority of our recent past took away and destroyed their heritage of family, tribe and homeland or country, and therefore they are "American" because "American" is all that they can be.  This is why African-Americans are the most American of all United States citizens.

 

Possibility of restoration of ethnic origins and repair of harm:

Because of the development of modern genetic science, it is now possible to use DNA measurements to determine the specific ethnic origins of an individual.  Such a project or program to restore the ethnic heritage of African-Americans would require a set of genetic records from West African groups and Central African groups, the usual source of American slaves.  The people of the United States should therefore fund and implement such a program as a means to wholly or partially restore the ethnic heritage of African-Americans that was taken from them through the cruel institution of slavery.  This is a legitimate form of repair or reparations.  African-Americans would be free to accept or reject such a good-faith attempt to restore this form of harm caused by the American institution of slavery.  Some would accept, and they would then be able to share privately and or publicly how this restoration impacts them, and to what extent it does feel like an appropriate repair of previous harm and victimization.  They will have an image of their history and of their ancestors as extended families, farmers, hunters, artists, warriors, household managers, traders, builders, and negotiators in their civilization of origin.  They will have their heritage of accomplishments, survival, war and peace, community productivity and wealth, traditions, celebrations, industry, arts and religion, all previously erased and discredited by the institution of slavery.  This is the least we can do, and it is worth a try because it might possibly cause the kind of healing and restoration of relationships that restorative justice is intended to achieve.

 

Replace racial language with ethnic language:

Another practice that I believe would repair the harm of American slavery would be to officially discard the language of race and replace it with the language of ethnic heritage.  This simply means to discontinue the use of "Black" and "African" and "non-White" in official records and population measurements to the extent that they can and should be replaced with Nigerian, or Ghanaian or tribal ethnic designations.  This may seem awkward at first, including to the African Americans this is intended to support, but think about how ethnic heritage has worked for Americans of European origins.  We have not argued that it is racial discrimination for Polish-Americans to organize themselves and socialize together in a "Polish American Club."  We have not deemed the "Knights of Columbus" to be a racially motivated act of discrimination.  Some Italian-Americans have been observed to be especially attached to the foods, the holiday cycles, and the customs of their old country.  There are Italian-American clubs, and Italian restaurants.  There are Chinese restaurants and Chinese enclaves in major American cities because of the historical experience of Chinese people in the United States.  But how often does one encounter a "Nigerian-American" restaurant, or a "Boruba" restaurant, or a Congo Restaurant?  Would we claim that the organization of a "Cameroon Club" was an act of racial segregation?  We certainly should not, because European Americans have actively upheld the rights of ethnic groups to assemble and socialize on the basis of their common ethnic origins and heritage.  This is a well-established American tradition.  It is an integral part of American history and American society.  If African-Americans were enabled to identify their ethnic origins with a similar level of certainty, they too could participate in this tradition of "ethnic-American" Clubs.  They would be richer for it, and so would we all.  This form of equality would only add to the treasure of African American music, and its profound impact on American culture, that is enjoyed and respected around the world.  I believe that if we discard or minimize the language of racial identity and emphasize instead the language of ethnic identity, we will take an important and helpful step toward greater equality, the kind of social equality of citizenship that was intended by the creation of the United States of America.

 

Personal and family privacy protected:

The responsibilities of democratic government should be exercised by the people through public capital and public works, and should not be privatized.  Personal freedom should be privatized and protected from government control over the personal decisions of individual citizens.  Family privacy should also be protected from government control over household decisions made by family members through centuries of social and religious tradition.

 

Consistent with the 9th and 10th Amendments to the Constitution.  Being profoundly important elements of our initial "Bill of Rights," these two amendments reserve power over personal and private decisions to the individual people and families among the population.  These decisions include but are not necessarily limited to:  sexual relations between or among consenting adults, to whom one shall be married, with whom one shall procreate, which religious beliefs or principles shall guide one's personal behavior, how an individual should cope with physical death and possibly prepare for it and possibly assist the event of death in order to reduce the burden of prolonged pain and prolonged loss of faculties and to reduce that same burden on the surviving relatives and loving friends.   Therefore, the decisions regarding affection, love and marriage, and death and dying, as well as one's chosen contribution to the labor and arts of the community, shall be designated as personal decisions and no government agency shall impose moral or religious imperatives upon or over the personal decisions of the people.  Further, I would support a federal law stating this same legal and Constitutional principle in order to make it a clear and firm rule of our society based upon human traditions and customs over the past 10,000 years.  The Ninth and Tenth Amendments follow:

 

 Amendment  #9:

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed

to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

 

Amendment #10:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor

prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to

the people.

 

Fundamental principles of democratic government:

The majority of political scientists are in agreement that the Age of Enlightenment and both the American and French Revolutions were intended to protect the personal lives and personal privacy of individuals from the intrusion of government or bureaucratic authority.  Anthropologists also support the conclusion that the governmental exercise of power over personal lives practiced by some ancient or traditional tribal societies is accurately defined as "theocracy" and was deliberately rejected through the intellectual and philosophical evolution of Western Civilization.  The operating principle of democratic government is that we do not elect legislative bodies for the purpose of telling us how to manage our personal lives.  We elect legislators to exercise reasonable control over public human relations and promote the productivity and health and welfare of the community, the state and the nation.  The government is empowered to exercise the police power to protect the weak from the strong and to protect the strong from the weak, to protect minorities from majorities, and to protect majorities from minorities, and to protect all of us from outbursts of harmful expressions of destructive emotional impulses or abandonment of civil behavior.  The purpose of government is to regulate economic life and the challenges presented by the ongoing evolution of human knowledge and technology.  We do not create the agencies and institutions of government in order to have them exercise the police power over our personal lives.