Commentary on Amend: The Fight for America, Episode 1
Neflix recently released a six-part documentary “Amend: The Fight for America.” For the next several weeks, I’ll watch one episode and share my thoughts.
Right away, when I think about the word “amend” I wonder what value it has when there has not been any amends. Instead of amending, I think America needed to do some trashing and abolishing.
This documentary focuses on the 14th amendment and citizenship. It asks about citizenship, without questioning citizenship itself.
This episode mentions that some people supported citizenship for Black people based on military service. The idea was that Black people earned citizenship by fighting for the country. It’s striking to me that violence was seen as a pathway to citizenship. That seems very white.
I’ve written elsewhere that “Citizenship Is a Status Like Whiteness; It Has to Go.” Citizenship, as a status with arbitrary qualifications, excludes people. Andrew Johnson tried to prevent “the dilution of citizenship,” as if citizenship is race. But the exercise of rights and abilities shouldn’t be based on citizenship, but humanity. I think this is part of what Malcolm X meant as he focused on human rights vs. civil rights.
I’m curious if “citizen” functions as another word for human? Is the struggle over citizenship and rights about who is human?
Some scholars say the invention of Black is a non-human and anti-citizen status. I don’t think the solution is to extend citizenship, after all, we see how that’s working. I think the solution is to make humanness larger. Ruth Bader Ginsberg said she wouldn’t point new countries to the US Constitution because it doesn’t prioritize human rights. I think she’s right.
The US Constitution is a white document which constitutes whiteness.
The book “The Racial Contract” by Charles W. Mills is insightful here. Mills says whites established a Racial Contract, which underwrites the social contract, and the Racial Contract is the truth of the social contract. According to Mills, the Racial Contract has been rewritten, but it has never been torn up altogether.
The Racial Contract makes nonwhites subpersons and restricts the language and ideas of equality and freedom to whites. This theory by Mills is another way of saying, “they weren’t talking about us when they wrote the Constitution; they were talking to each other. And there’s no contradiction in the Constitution because they considered us subpersons.”
The US Constitution is a racist contract. When someone takes an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution, they are pledging to uphold and defend whiteness. When they used to say, “The union must and shall be preserved” they were talking about whiteness. Whiteness is the “Union.” This is the United States of Whiteness. This stolen land is governed by different states of whiteness, different ways of being white. States’ rights are about the right to be a certain kind of white.
Look at what sociologist Joe Feagin says about the Constitution in his book Racist America:
The U.S. Constitution, which embraced slavery and imbedded the global racist order in the United States, remains the nation’s legal, political, and — to a substantial degree—moral foundation. Its openly racist provisions, although overridden by later constitutional amendments, have not been deleted.
At no point has a new, truly democratic constitutional convention been held to replace this document with one created by representatives of all the people, including the great majority of the U.S. population not represented at the 1787 Convention.
The current constitution is an example of how white power can alter, add, and amend, but it’s unwilling to trash, delete, start over, and replace. US society functions like the constitution with racism and amendments in the same space.
Feagin calls for a new antiracist constitution created by a cross-section of people. And I agree. The country should void the whole document.
That of course is not the idea behind Netflix’s documentary, “Amend.” And from the documentary, we learn that trashing the constitution was not Frederick Douglass’s idea either.
At first, Douglass was critical of the Constitution as pro-slavery document, but he later changed his mind and saw it as a liberating document. I understand the tactics of using the Constitution, but that doesn’t change the intent behind the Constitution.
Rather than gushing about its specious virtues, it would’ve been more admirable and accurate for Douglass to say the document is pro-slavery, but we can use it. As a practical matter, one may need to use hog slop and parts, but there’s no need to cherish them.
On the Constitution, I side with William Lloyd Garrison.
Garrison called the Constitution “a covenant with death, an agreement with Hell," and “the pro-slavery, war sanctioning Constitution of the United States." Garrison did not believe in unity with slaveholders. He used the slogan "No Union with Slaveholders," and he preferred to see the Union dissolve.
“No Union with Slaveholders”
I think the focus by abolitionists on slavery instead of white identity was shortsighted. Theodore Allen in his book, “The Invention of the White Race,” says the white race is the peculiar institution. The abolitionists should’ve said, “No Union with Whites.”
I imagine white racists would’ve said, “No Union with N-words.” We learn in this episode that John Bingham crafted the 14th amendment, and he had this to say on the N-word:
“I take exception to the abuse of the word n*****. To me, it does not denote color of skin, but designates a class of creatures by the color of their souls. Those who set their feet upon defenseless fellow men and convert them into what we call a 'slave'.
"These man-stealers, though their skin be as white as the driven snow, are the real N*****.”
It reminds me of what James Baldwin said about the N-word. Whites should’ve refused union with themselves.
As moderate Democrats and Republicans call for unity after the GOP just staged and supported a coup by white terrorists, “No Union with Slaveholders” is an example of the stance we should have today. The slogan today could be “No Union with White Terrorists” or “No Union with the GOP,” or “No Union with Insurrectionists.”
Garrison wanted to cancel some folks and some plans. Instead of Lincoln talking about a house divided against itself can’t stand, Lincoln should’ve been more specific about what he wouldn’t stand for in a house. Some ideologies and policies should not exist or have support, particularly by the state.
The GOP is a hate group; it is the political party of whiteness and white domestic terrorism. Too many Democrats think the GOP will amend its ways. Democrats should say, “No Union with the GOP” instead of calling them their “friends and colleagues across the aisle.”
The United States is a country that’s collapsing. I wish this country never came to be like it did. Amendments are reforms. We need abolition.