This article is very painful to read because it shows how much pain was endured by ingrained injustice. The author is filled with pain and quite clearly this needs to come out, so ultimately all these tough words are a good thing.
Stephen Jamal Leeper being moved by anger and pain can be seen as part of the emancipation process.
Emancipation is a word that can be understood as (finally) becoming equals to others. It is what we all need. The origin of the word emancipation is based on ex (out) manus (hand) and capere (take) and can be described in more ordinary English as ‘not (any longer) being led’. Emancipation is not an act of freedom; it is an act of becoming equals.
It should be understood that anger seeps out in the process of becoming equals, especially right at the time before becoming equals to others. The anger cannot be contained. The struggle that has been endured for years and generations is expressed in this anger.
But the anger is not emancipation itself. It is the step of freedom before emancipation can occur to become the equal of the other. The anger tells others: Here I am, here we are; you need to take us seriously. I am my own person now.
It is good to hear this story, even when the writer is making the same mistake that was made against him or against his forefathers and -mothers and that still feeds his anger. It is the mirror in which we can all see ourselves. The push-down-to-the-ground, endured over many generations, comes out. Even if none of us did the pushing-down, we all live in a society in which that pushing-down was once established and in which it still echoes long and far.
The story is actually painful to hear. The inequality of the words and the anger are so large and loud that one cannot but wonder how this is not recognized by the writer himself. But right where reason should matter, it doesn’t matter because the fact is that reason did not matter before. So why should it now?
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It is not possible to build a society based on equality when all are not treated as equals. First and foremost, we need to treat each other as equals — that is a major battle won, and sincerely not an easy task to accomplish in our personal lives.
But next, the rules of the land need to be examined. Are they based on equality?
In the United Kingdom and in the United States, the voting system is not based on equality; it is based on divide-and-conquer. People are segregated in voting districts and they battle each other over that one seat. Let me put it here like this: Whites fight whites over the win and someone white wins the seat.
Especially when there are substrata in society that are not recognized as the same as mainstream, people that are not treated as emancipated people (non-whites), then suppression by the divide-and-conquer system will do its work without any mercy and more deeply than when all are mainstream. The system will find the tiniest amount of disagreement and with that it will squeeze the win from the loser.
When push comes to shove, an exclusive democracy will always be an eye-for-an-eye. The winner takes it all, the loser standing small (or not standing at all). Meanwhile, the divided will battle the divided so the happy few in top will rest in peace (yes, much like described in the Hunger Games). Some may be non-white, but in general mainstream is picked over non-mainstream.
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One in eight Americans is African American. Three out of 100 Senators are African American and that is actually an all-time high. The system effectively promotes racism, suppresses the representation of African Americans.
More than half of us are women and we do not even have half of that half sit in all our seats. The system effectively promotes the suppression of women.
The system discriminates systematically even when all are white:
In 1996, New Zealand changed its two-party system to incorporate proportional voting. The number of female representatives jumped by a phenomenal 47 percent in the first next new election. This shows real well how the district voting system discriminates. Winner-take-all suppresses large voting minorities.
Today, with the better system, forty percent of the NZ representatives are females. The US has about half that percentage. Our system suppresses female representatives.
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The truth of the matter: Being able to speak the truth at the tables that matter.
This is us, to the left. We are segregated in districts where we have to battle each other for that single seat. This is pure divide-and-conquer.
Voting minorities of as large as 49.9 percent of the voters remain unrepresented; they don’t sit at the tables of decision making, not speaking their truths. Fifty percent plus one vote can dictate the outcome to the unrepresented voting minorities. It doesn’t matter if the voting minority is African American, young adults, women, homosexuals, or poor whites; when not in the majority, no seat is obtained. All these large voting minorities are not represented to the level of their numbers. Emancipation cannot be obtained in this system.
To the right in the image above one can see the actual We The People system. As shown in this example of a city council with eight seats, almost 90 percent of the voters are guaranteed that their vote translates into a representative they handpicked themselves. All substantial voting minorities are represented in this better system; it promotes emancipation. Example.
We can try to make our neighborhood be based on equality. Yet when the city is based on divide-and-conquer, we will never succeed in combating racism. Emancipation is not possible is society does not allow it for its most important mechanism of representation.
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When San Francisco moved from At-Large to district voting, the ugly voting system became quite obvious. Prior, in the semi-proportional system also known as city-wide, they had 6 men and 5 women in the eleven supervisor seats. After the change to district voting, the city had 10 men and 1 woman in these eleven seats (nice twist: a black woman).
The Democratic Party did their best to fix it up over the years. Wonderful as the board may appear today, the Democratic Machine tried to quickly mask the divide-and-conquer system we have with applying a nice pancake layer of We The People makeup.
It should not be a surprise that the system was changed to the more restricted version. Back then, the Green Party had become a popular party in the Bay Area, getting some of the seats in the region. Today, they are gone. By moving back to district voting, the Democrats made sure that third parties wouldn’t get their seats. Today, all SF supervisors are registered Democrats.
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Let’s not uncover and discard the good parts of our society; let’s fix the ground rules that aggravate racism, ingrain discrimination of all kinds, and makes emancipation unattainable.
The good news is that the US Constitution is already demanding the We The People system for cities and counties. Here is a visual.
A: Federal and State governments are given powers and freedoms.
B: The 14th Amendment demands the better system put in place.
As shown to the left, Federal and State governments received #A from the US Constitution and they can use #A to create themselves some leeway with #B.
Cities and counties are not even mentioned in the US Constitution, and so they must fully abide by the highest document of the nation.
States did not receive the power to hand over power to third parties within that then extends their right to ignore #B to the same level as the State.
Cities and counties must follow #B strictly as declared in the US Constitution. But as you can see in the same visual to the right, they assumed those powers that they do not have. They perpetuate the divide-and-conquer system to a level that is not allowed. They should have the We The People system in place, per the highest document in the nation.
Racism may never disappear from the face of the earth. But divide-and-conquer can disappear from the face of the earth, and that will be a wonderful day in our struggle against racism. It will make this a better nation for all of us. Best of all, voting equality brings emancipation to all, and that can heal the angriest heart.
We are a diverse nation and we need to honor all. That is best done when all are able to tell our own truths; we should be able to do that in our natural numbers.
We air our grievances, make others see our struggle. But the momentum will pass and things will revert back to a slightly different but similar level of discrimination if all we do is vent (or destroy artificial monuments and symbols). Unless we focus on a real institution of division, discrimination and racism that needs changing: Our voting system.
We need to emancipate our entire society. We can today ! ! !
