The Weight is not Mine: It's OURS

Cinnamon Brown Skin
Of a land I call home
Claimed
By savagery of Spanish conquests not long ago.
Then overtaken by my European ancestors
Trampled on by their contadini shoes
Air tainted with their meridionali accents.
Roman Catholic tongues denouncing Peyotist praises
While you, my tan Brothers and Sisters
Looked on bearing the cross
Making the way to your Native Calvary
To crucify your ways
And accept ours that deserved execution before Ellis’ birth.
I – indigent
On indigenous terrain
Rain, wash away my guilt,
My shame
My history
My whiteness

Oh, Women of America . . .

“Oh women of America . . . demand justice, simple justice, as the right to every race!” Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (a mouthful of a name for a woman with a mouthful to say) wrote in her short essay titled, “Women’s Political Future” (1894). What is a woman’s political future? Look at Hillary Clinton.

The 1993 TIME Magazine cover to the right questions the “Ascent of Woman”— the woman being Hillary Clinton. Have we “ascended?” What have we “ascended” from? Toward what are we “ascending?” Over one hundred years ago Frances Ellen Watkins Harper analyzed the same questions. She writes that women should not make attempts “of discovering new worlds, but that of filling this world with fairer and higher aims than the greed of gold and the lust of power.” Here the issue (and the “cure”) isn’t a binary; rather, it’s dialectic—as it should be.

Advocating change is nothing new; both men and women have been at it for years (no pun intended). We see this clearly today in the midst of presidential primaries. But what if Hillary, the first, serious, female presidential candidate took advice from Harper? How would her campaign look? Clinton centers her campaign on the notion of ‘change.’ But if we change things too drastically where will that leave us? We must, as Harper’s piece indicates, take a dialectical approach to transforming society, for too many changes too quickly leads to chaos—the last thing we need more of in politics.

The ‘sociological equation’ for change (thesis + antithesis = synthesis) fits well here: Instead of trying to revamp society in one fell swoop, we have to look at history & our current circumstances (thesis), and identify the ‘wrongs’ in society & determine a plan(s) for improving them (antithesis) to create a ‘new,’ more ‘useful’ concept of ‘change’ (synthesis). Can Hillary Clinton do this? I have a feeling Harper would’ve said YES.