Philadelphia Inquirer, July 4th, 2010
‘It is a well known fact, that black people, upon certain days of publick jubilee, dare not be seen after twelve o’clock in the day . . . I allude particularly to the Fourth of July!”
In 1813, James Forten, one of Philadelphia’s leading citizens, and an African American, included this line in an open letter addressed to the Pennsylvania state legislature. From late morning on, drunken gangs of whites milled around the city’s public spaces chasing and assaulting any blacks unlucky enough to be caught out of doors. Forten went on to express his disgust that these Americans, on Independence Day, could so “sully what they profess to adore.”
Forten did not expect the lawmakers to do anything about this behavior, which had already been outlawed, but he hoped by reminding them of it to persuade the assembly to vote against a bill before the state Senate that would have drastically limited the rights of free black people.
Forten referred to Pennsylvania as “almost the only state in the Union wherein the African race have justly boasted of rational liberty and protection of the laws.” At least until 1813. The bill that looked most likely to pass that year would have required all blacks in the state, including Forten, to register with the local authorities. Those caught without the necessary identification papers would face fines and jail, and after six months, if the fines were not paid, the possibility of being sold into slavery!
Proponents justified the legislation as a protective measure. The United States was at war with the British Empire for a second time, and many white Pennsylvanians feared that in the chaos of the conflict hordes of runaway slaves would head north and seek refuge in the Commonwealth.
Does some of this sound familiar? It should. A new Arizona law makes the failure to carry immigration documents a crime and provides police officers with broad powers to question and detain any person they suspect might be an illegal alien. If the backers of the so-called Support our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act hold the truths enumerated in the Declaration of Independence to be self-evident, it’s hard to tell.
The system of majority rule does not mean the numerically dominant group gets to do anything it wants. Some day in the not too distant future whites in Arizona may no longer constitute a majority. In that case, enlightened self-interest alone would suggest setting a good example now of the importance of protecting the rights of the minority.
In Pennsylvania, Forten argued that blacks already suffered enough from the abuse of their fellow citizens without having the government turn against them, too. The proposed legislation did not pass and, though in the short run the war went from bad to worse for the Americans, the predicted influx of refugees from the South never materialized.
The Arizona statute represents the same sort of “man the watch towers to keep them out” kind of vigilance that produced the Pennsylvania bills and other bad laws throughout our history. This was not what the author of the oft repeated phrase, the price of liberty is eternal vigilance, had in mind. The people have rights. Governments have powers. And every expansion of a government’s power comes at the cost of someone’s rights.
James Forten served in the War for Independence and understood better than most that the struggle to preserve our liberty and freedom did not end with the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1783. It was just getting started.
I found your article in todays Inquirer to be misleading and counterproductive. As a lifelong liberal and GFS alum, parent and coach, I fought for civil rights my entire life. You misunderstand the situation in Arizona and react in a typical kneejerk racist manner. Yes racist, because you ignore the realities of what is happening with crime and economic welfare of poor people in Arizona and ultimately the worst impact will be on poor blacks. Remember the local movement in Phila. to remove the Prison Cap? So called liberal activists like stefan Presser and David Richmond put their egos at the forefront of a movement to release poor black persecuted and unfairly jailed black men. Horseshit!!! It wasn’t people like you and me who are victimized by these men, it’s the poor blacks in the criminal’s local communities! How dare David richmond and Dilworth law firm profit financially and get publicity for their ego driven acts suing the city( that would be the taxpayers). Yeah lets let them all out of jail so they can rape and pillage the poor african american neighborhoods.
So Arizona has real problems with crime, with social services, with paying for illegal/undocumented foreigners. Anyone can throw up a blanket of Constitutional rights to cover the harsh realities of immigration out of control. At least Arizona is doing something about the problem. Or we can let undocumented workers run amok and keep the black man in his place. Come on Grant, don’t lecture in a vacuum. I ‘ve worked with enough victims to know its not really the Quaker way.
Oh at least I read your articles and you write well- if readership is the goal, you are doing a fantastic job, if the truth is important, look harder at the implications of what you write,…. just my opinion …Brad Bank, GFS 71
Hi Brad –
I see your point.
A couple of responses –
1. The degree to which we are willing to restrict the rights of some in the society in order to crack down on the scoff laws will, and should be, endlessly argued.
Referring to your example, does a predominantly white government have a responsibility to keep all of those black men in jail who would otherwise “rape and pillage the poor african american neighborhoods,” as you put it? Interesting question. Governing is always messy.
2. I try not teach my opinions on particular political questions. One of the great things about participating in the public debate is hearing from people like you who energetically disagree with me. I post my pieces on a blog – fromtheclassroom.com – and I also post responses. The kids read them, and discuss them, and decide what they think.
I will post your response on the blog and we’ll discuss it next fall. I’ll have the kids look up the Prison Cap movement and learn something about it, so that they can see the connection.
Thanks for taking the time to write.
that same thing happens to whites by blacks more recently(greek picnic-flash mobs)not cnturies ago. how come you dont have the guts to mention that? ill bet your to scared to teach that slavery was invented in africa huh. jj
John –
You’re absolutely right, everybody picks on everybody.
I chose the old example because of its connection to July 4th.
I did not know that Africans “invented” slavery. I do know that Africans were enslaving each other before the Europeans got there and we certainly do talk about that in class.
Grant
Beware encroaching government powers-We need to think out of the box.
Many years ago I was a bank teller. Very carefully I had to handle the packets of bills. The bands would explode with red dye. We could put red dye things on the ground near the Mexican border. Then when illegal immigrants slipped over the border, the people would step on the ground where red dye would spray and stay on them for weeks.
Also, if we ever had to let criminals or evil people out of jail, then put chips in their body. We would know where the extremists were. We would know who was seeing the extremists.
There are other ways to deal with problems. We need to have brain storming sessions. We need people who think out of the box.
(I agree that none of this sounds kind. I am not practicing my mantra.- “In our pathway there will be opportunities to help others and to show kindness.”)–Barbara
Wow. You certainly are thinking out of the box.
I hope things don’t go that direction, but they might.
Grant
Before I reply to your just-published commentary, let me briefly give you my background so that you don’t jump to any conclusions where my values and priorities may have originated. I am the 67-year old son of two Roosevelt Democrats and publisher of the Germantown Chronicle and Mt. Airy Independent newspapers in Northwest Philadelphia; where I was born and have lived for most of my life. This is the very community where German Quakers wrote the first slavery protest and I am located daily one city block from this city’s only certified stop on the Underground Railroad. I am well aware of racial imbalance issues and defended against racism in my early teenage years in this very neighborhood and in the military in South Carolina in the early 1960s – – not a popular place to take that stand as a white Yankee and before the Civil Rights Act. I think I get it and I am pretty sure you don’t.
As to the 1813 events, I am not going to research further the data you outline, but it occurs to me that right on its face there is a drastic difference between a group of people who were forcefully brought here, enslaved and kept by households without any real documentation of births, marriages and deaths to give them a place in society, and those who knowingly violate a nation’s laws and impersonate others for personal gain.
Sure our still-infant experiment in representative democracy has had its flaws and warts, but it was the incorporation and extension of laws and enforcement that took us from a frontier existence and created the first and still only majority free middle class nation in the world. It was the very expansive creation of financial protection and stability, and the social safety net that leveled out the playing field for post World War II American citizens – – yes, I mean to underscore how it applied to citizens.
Bear in mind it was a giant leap for those who may have first arrived believing that large national governments were evil to accept the concept of paying taxes to a national government, but did so with the full understanding they would be protected by that government, and that protection extended beyond what the Continental Navy would do. The New Deal was built on creating confidence that the assets of average person would not be subject to the caprice of markets and dilution by unstable monetary policy. Working place conditions and labor contracts and labor law did much to bring us to the point where the social safety net would only need to be used rarely.
That entire set of guarantees are evaporating before our very eyes and do not think it is lost on the vast majority of Americans who fully understand that the government (federal, state and local) may be taking 30-40% of what they earn, but are supposed to be using it to protect them and their families
Those families bought us books and sent us to school. We can add and subtract, understand compound interest, know what budgeting means, and understand the burden of debt that multiplies when uncontrolled. Every day that we keep funding unemployment insurance and are not creating productive meaningful jobs for our own citizens, while winking at the imbalanced and citizen-subsidized illegal immigrant work force, we are setting ourselves up for a major political backlash, possibly not seen since 1858-61.
Both political parties are playing with nitroglycerine here. The Republicans if they think that a permanent working illegal class does favors for agribusiness and others, and the Democrats if they think they are buying future votes from using state mandated funds to provide a separate social service network where you do not need any identity cards to qualify.
I know the humanitarian argument, but it does not hold water and can be done other ways that do not slap the Constitution in the face. What has been created here is sort of a left wing version of “Manifest Destiny” where the challenge is to gain as much as you can regardless of what is fair and equitable under the law – – in other words, the more aggressive and crafty the illegal immigrant, the more he or she can amass for themselves the better; with folks who think like you as their enablers.
Who are biggest losers in this system? First those at the lowest economic rungs on the ladder in the areas where illegal immigrants know they can congregate without having to answer any questions – – questions we have to answer every day. Those would likely be other new legal immigrants and racial minorities who have the most transitory employment. Does it not fly in the face of what our system was designed to ensure when someone sneaks in, takes someone else’s identity (or forges one) works for a company that asks few questions by design, has citizen children on the government dime that are then subsidized in schools that can’t even ask who the parents are, and get free medical care and social services where no questions can be asked either? All of this is funded by citizens who have no say in creating and perpetuating this system that often dials them and their children out first..
Mr. Calder, what scares me more is that you are an educator and might be passing on this bewildering rationalization of how this country is supposed to deliver fairness and justice. Unfortunately I can remember the moment I first saw it coming. President Clinton appointed Doris Meissner the Director of the Immigration and Naturalization Service and shortly thereafter she appeared on CSpan on the morning show. Founder Brian Lamb asked her first “What is the mission and purpose of the Immigration and Naturalization Service?” – – her reply: “The primary purpose of the INS is not guarding borders and checking visas, the primary purpose of the INS is to provide a social safety net for the world’s needy’”.
The greatest aspect of this society is of course your first amendment rights to speak your mind. We continue to debate where the priorities belong and how we adjust them from time to time, but there are limits. You can’t yell fire in a crowded theatre. Although we were founded in a tax revolt, the society has concluded you can tax us to a certain limit if you provide certain services. We respect human life like no other society ever founded, but we give up our sons and daughters periodically in its defense,
What the policies you advocate do is take away our future without consent – – it is unlikely that we will stand for it much longer.
Jim Foster
Publisher
Germantown Chronicle
Mt. Airy Independent
I greatly appreciate your thoughtful comments, and I’m sure I “don’t get” a lot of things.
But I have a few responses, if you’re interested –
1. I disagree with you that the two groups – runaway slaves and the Mexicans who are crossing Arizona’s border – are not comparable.
My point is that both found/find themselves in situations not of their making and were/are simply taking advantage of an opportunity to escape a bad situation for a potentially better one.
2. I see your points about the benefits of our system for its citizens and I certainly value them for myself and my children.
Wanting our governments to protect us from each other and from “outsiders” AND wanting to protect ourselves from our own governments’ (federal, state and local) expanding powers seems to be a pretty good description of the endless struggle/debate/balancing act that is a republic.
3. You may be right that “we can add and subtract and understand the burden of debt that multiplies when uncontrolled,” but much of the federal legislation generated in recent years doesn’t suggest that our elected representatives can, or want to.
Maybe the “illegal immigrant work force” is a major cause of our staggering accumulation of debt but it doesn’t seem so from my vantage point.
4. I am not suggesting that the borders be simply opened. And I understand Arizonans’ frustration with the lack of effective federal immigration control. But, in my opinion, sb1070 is not a good solution because it sacrifices other, to me, more important principles.
5. One of the great things about participating in the public debate is hearing from people like you who disagree with me, although I think we share more common ground than it might appear.
My pieces are posted on a blog – fromtheclassroom.com – and used as teaching material. I also post responses. The kids read them, and discuss them, and decide what they think.
I will post your response on the blog and we’ll discuss it next fall. You have given them lots to think about. Thanks for taking the time to contribute so much to their learning experience.
Grant
Maybe I should have been clearer on the slave vs. illegals point. I saw the registration of former slaves as giving them “citizen value” and recognition in the state in which they formerly had no standing. Realizing that in 1813 we were far from a national standard on those points, at the very least Pennsylvania former slaves could not be “rounded up as the usual suspects”. I know that is far from universal justice, but it was a start in the place where the anti-slavery movement all began. I see no parallel with Mexican illegals who abandon their birth country voluntarily in order to find better opportunity. I do not believe doing an illegal act that is intended to defraud from the very outset moves you ahead of others who follow the law.
As to item #3 what we are faced with is the worst possible collusion between politicians and industry running up massive amounts of government debt and foisting it on the average taxpayer. Every serving politician knows that illegals undercut the cost of doing business for every contractor who runs a 2 man crew up through a meatpacking or chicken processing houses; and all the fruit and vegetable picking you could imagine. By looking the other way and refusing to enforce its own laws, the government is discounting the cost of doing business and placing the cost of subsidizing the lifestyles of not just the workers, but generations of their own families directly on the legal citizens who pay the taxes most illegals will never pay. The federal government mandates that the states provide all those services, mandate that they cannot ask questions about who they are providing them to, and in that process bankrupt cities and towns all over this country. Remember, it is only the federal government that can run up off-budget debt and run deficits that build debt far into the future. If you want to give your students something to ponder, teach them about how reckless decisions by leaders about debt brought us to World War II in Europe and then make it clear how many millions died because of it. Government leaders at Versailles decided that the losers would pay the winners into the indefinite future no matter how much inflationary money they had to print to do it. Germany’s Weimar Republic is the model that much of Europe has operated on for the last few years and we are also adopting as we now generate debt that exceeds the asset value of the entire economy. Rapidly the world is approaching the point where in effect, everyone has borrowed twice the value of their homes to live. This kind of lying to ourselves is unsustainable. That is exactly what we do when we bring in a cheap labor underclass and fund it back door with imposed taxes on those whose jobs they and their children will be taking from all those who did the heavy lifting. The appropriate term is “Promote the General Welfare” and that refers to the general welfare of the citizen participants in the great experiment who have paid their way from the outset.
It is the country’s principles of governance, not yours (or mine for that matter) that are the controlling legal issues here. Doris Meissner lied and began a process of organized falsification of records with intent to dilute the culture with non-citizens because she believed her principles trumped standing law. This President and this government owes Arizona the same level of resistance to illegal immigration that California has – – it does not have anything close, and it has intentionally left that border unsecured for all the wrong reasons.
I think the country has just about had it with those practices and the next round of elected leadership will be sent to Washington with a mandate to turn the country back to the principles that created the laws in the first place.
If that does not work and work soon, we will revisit the last century’s worst nightmares.
More interesting points.
Can’t wait to share them with my students.
As far as the “former slaves” were concerned. It wasn’t at all clear that they were “former.” Their owners would have claimed that they remained slaves no matter where they went and that they were committing an illegal act by running away in the first place.
I think the interest in registering them was entirely motivated by a desire to keep track of them and had nothing to do with helping them achieve any more substantial legal status.
Also the bill would have applied to all of the already resident free blacks in PA, including Forten which was, of course, the bigger problem from his point of view.
Grant
I find your article very misleading and disgustingly political. The Pennsylvania example you cite did not involve ” ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS “. Why must the likes of you keep stirring the pot of whitie vs blackie? I’ll bet you are also teaching your mush heads that all Teapot supporters are NAXIS! We are! When we take back our Govt it will include our schools. No longer will history students be taught hatred. Freedom will be the battle cry. I hope you are near retirement. I hate to see grown men cry.
Dean –
I’m little confused by your comments. You may support the Arizona law, which is fine with me, but if your goal is to “take back the government” then don’t you and I agree that the expansion of government powers that has occurred in the last decade, for example, is a problem that must be addressed? Even if we may not see eye to eye on how best to address it.
Grant
I am afraid that I must quibble with both Peter Lillback (“A time to keep Washington’s spark of liberty alive,” 7/4) and Grant Calder (“Beware encroaching government powers,” 7/4). Lillback’s insistence that religion is a prerequisite for morality will be a back door for some to impose their private beliefs on minority religions through the force of law. We have seen this in the past, as Jim Crow segregation was justified by quotes taken out of context from the Old and New Testaments. We see it today as some Christians attempt to impose their beliefs about the beginning and end of life on Jews, to enforce their belief (that life begins even before the zygote is implanted, that the mother’s life is less important than the “sinless” life of the growing fetus) through coercive legal restrictions on abortion. We see it in false complaints about “death panels” to offer counseling about living wills to those who already face death because of their health. We see it in punitive legislation against the poor, the unemployed, and the stranger in our midst.
Calder’s caution against encroaching government is misplaced. His example of James Forten’s pioneering civil rights effort shows that we must use the government’s own mechanisms, and the public’s and legislators’ own consciences, to direct government power towards fairness and justice. Too many of us have given up on participating in government, on the theory that the government is corrupt, and that citizen activism is a ridiculous waste of time. We watch passively as the Supreme Court first delays election decisions to the lower courts, and then claims there is no time for a Bush/Gore recount to meet Constitutional requirements. We watch passively as the Supreme Court gives equality to fictional corporate citizens to buy elections by drowning out the voice of the people. We watch passively as obstructionist senators prevent the President from choosing competent leaders to run his government, and water down economic stimulus to the point that it is barely effective. We can elect an effective legislature in the Commonwealth and in the Congress, but our numbers and our efforts must be great enough to overcome the powerful. Young people in particular must turn out for change in even greater numbers this fall than they did in 2008. We have wandered for 30 years in a conservative desert, and we must insist on our right in our own promised land.
I am struck by the extent to which we seem to share views.
I am completely with you in decrying the lack of participation in government, though a number of our students and graduates are very involved, and I couldn’t agree more that its frustrating to watch the attempts of some seemingly thoughtful people in Washington to get important things done stymied by obstructionist legislators.
I think the current system needs major reworking and it’s time for a another constitutional convention (Philadelphia seems like as good a location as any) but I’m afraid that would require the concerted efforts of a much more activist citizenry than we have now.
Grant
Grant
I acknowledge the closeness of our views. That is why I called it a quibble. I only wish the Inquirer would allow as strong language on the left as it allows its regular right wing distorters.
Ben
The “White” rage behind the facist, racist immigration law passed in Arizona is only the tip of the iceberg. We now also have attacks in state after state on a woman’s right to choose, same-sex marriage and the dismantling of affirmative action programs. It is no coincidence that with the election of our first African American president, we have seen the rise of these racist, xenophobic, homophobic tea baggers, a group of old, White, mostly rural and southern, blue collar, poorly educated, evangelical Christians who’s mantra is to “Take our country back.” My question is then, just what America do they think they have lost (think “Jim Crow) and who took it. (think anyone that doesn’t look like them or live the same lifestyle) These are people who continue to have their fears, paranoia and especially their bigotry so easily pandered to and preyed upon by the “right,” which has manifested itself into the Republican Party of “NO,” to get them to fight to their culture wars so they can get elected all to feed the avarice and greed of their corporate America and Wall Street masters, the 1% of the population that controls 40% of our wealth, while royally screwing the rest of us. With more babies of “color” than white born everyday in the United States, with Hispanics becoming the majority by 2040, as you correctly pointed out, and younger generations, better educated and having grown up in a more culturally diverse society, reluctant to embrace their parents’ right-wing ideology or fight their culture wars because they do not see everyone that doesn’t look like them or live the same lifestyle as “The Other,” the aforementioned miscreants are, excuse my language, “scared shitless,” because they see their racist, xenophobic, homophobic White reign coming to an end.
These Sarah Palin “Real Americans” have embarked on a last gasp campaign to dehumanize certain sectors of our population: racial and ethnic minorities, women, nonheterosexuals, atheists and agnostics, seeking to create an ” us vs. them” society. We can only hope that as this aging and dwindling number of hate filled, mean spirited miscerants go the way of the Dodo, in a generation or two we can truly move to a world, in the words of Martin Luther King, and I paraphrase, where “People will only be judged on the strength of their character.” In the meantime, we’ll still have to suffer these fools, though never gladly.
take issue with some points you made. First, James Forten was a citizen. The undocumented are not. He should not have had to register, whereas the illegals should.
Second, that is not in Arizona law. It is U.S. law that aliens must carry their documents at all times. Surely you know this. Don’t you?
The Arizona law, as amended, specifically prohibits detaining “any person they suspect might be an illegal alien.” Police can only stop and question after the person has committed a different infraction. It’s not much different from a cop asking you for ID after you were stopped for a traffic violation.
If anyone is contributing to fear among “immigrants,” legal or not, I am afraid it is you.
Kingston Nevins,Philadelphia
Of course, you’re right about the amended version of the Arizona law.
And I do recognize that aliens must carry documentation.
One of the arguments Forten made against the PA law was that, according to its wording, he would have had 24 hours to register his own newborn (black) child, or the baby could have been taken away from him.
Supporters of the law would have said this was a totally absurd, worst-case-scenario that never would have happened and was certainly not intended, but Forten was making the point that such legislation always has the potential to be abused once it’s out of the hands of the legislature.
I know some cops and they freely admit that people are sometimes stopped (officially) for one infraction when the real cause is suspicion of another.
I understand Arizonans’ frustration with federal immigration policy, I just think (hope) we can do better than sb1070 in responding to the challenges of illegal immigration.
Thank you for your courteous response. I think the difference in this case that the wording of the law prohibits racial profiling, unlike the Forten case where the wording said he would have to register his baby, etc.
Any law can be abused potentially. That is not good enough justification to not have laws.
I see your point, but proving that officers are profiling is difficult. And to complicate matters further, profiling sometimes makes good sense given limited law enforcement resources and time.
I read the texts of sb1070 and of the house bill that followed it with all of the amended sections highlighted. The legislators (and their staffs) certainly don’t make it easy to decipher what exactly the statutes say.
It will be interesting to see how things play out in Arizona.