In the reading from the 1619 project, America Wasn’t a Democracy, Until Black People Made it One written by Nikole Hannah – Jones highlights key ideas significant to American history. These key ideas being: white leaders created a nation of inequality where colored individuals were inferior and slavery was the causation(build-up) of democracy. Written in a previous blog post focused on capitalism, slaves were used for the benefits of expanding land, picking cotton and more. Colored people were exploited as slaves helped America expand and grow to become the place it is today. While slaves were used for the idea of capitalism, they were also the reason America became a democracy. As mentioned, white leaders created a nation of inequality which contradicts what the rights promised were. Jones pushes this claim in the reading by arguing that colored individuals didn’t have these rights, also being the reason more and more people fought against it over history. This was what led to democracy, a nation where the people get to decide. After slaves were freed, their rights were still limited, meaning what was promised wasn’t granted. Freed slaves weren’t allowed to vote, own property, get married and more. The fight continued through history until their rights were granted, leading to a democratic land.
From this reading, I grasped a better understanding of the time period of slavery and how it led to a democratic nation. I also notice not much of a change in present day America because as of recently, there has been a movement for BLM (Black Lives Matter) meaning there is still inequality upon us today. There’s also statuses to climb in America or any nation to differentiate the leaders at the top and the poor. The fact that America claimed its independence from the British due to the Declaration of Independence but still chose to maintain the rights to own slaves makes me question if the founding fathers saw a correlation to their actions with slaves. As slaves were still humans but the founding fathers allowed Americans to use them as properties, not completely alike but the British were holding America as land.
I’m glad to see this reading interested you, but there is much that is vague or unclear here. For starters, I don’t think that Hannah-Jones argues that slavery was a cause of democracy, although it certainly spurred the growth of the early nation. I think you’re more on track when you suggest that democracy was the product of a struggle to realize the promise contained in “all men are created equal.” But really, Hannah-Jones’s essay pays little attention to that struggle—she is much more focused on the ways that America’s founding excluded people of color, from fighting a war of independence (she says) to protect slavery to enshrining slavery in the Constitution to denying Black people equal rights in myriad ways from Reconstruction through the 20th century.
What your post (and to a great extent Hannah-Jones’s essay) lacks is a sense of conflict—not only between Blacks and whites but amongst the Founders and within Early America itself. The political system of Early America usually disenfranchised both free Blacks and poorer whites. Both Black and white people worked to abolish slavery. Many, but not all, of the Founders owned slaves. Some argued quite strenuously against slavery, but were forced to compromise at the Constitutional Convention. The Constitution protects slavery, but only in limited ways, and did not use the word or make slavery a national institution. Nor did it guarantee a right to hold property in enslaved human beings.
To correct a more strictly factual error: formerly enslaved people were in fact allowed to marry and own property after slavery, although their right to vote was widely if not universally violated.
Lastly, refrain from using the term “colored people” (a term with fraught historical associations) and instead use people of color, African American, or Black, depending on what specific group(s) you’re discussing.