Voting Rights

Posted on May 29, 2015 by Sarah Shugars

In any democracy, the question of who gets to vote has important implications for a group’s power and voice within a society.

Voting has taken place within modern America since at least 1607 when the English established their first permanent settlement at Jamestown. At that time, six men from among the colony’s 105 settlers participated in electing Edward Wingfield as president.

While a 5.7% voting rate among colonists may sound like a dismal start to what would become our nation, those six men represented 100% of eligible voters.

In the United States’ first presidential election, held in 1788–89, there were 43,782 popular votes cast from a population of 3 million. Incidentally, “only 6 of the 10 states casting electoral votes chose electors by any form of popular vote.”

At that time, of course, the constitution didn’t provide any guidelines on who could vote. By convention, only white male property owners over the age of 21 had the right to vote. That was the popular understanding of “the people” at the time.

Since then, our definition has expanded.

In 1870, the 15th amendment gave black men the right to vote, and in 1920, the 19th amendment allowed women to vote as well. Then, in 1971, amongst the protests of the Vietnam War, the 26th amendment lowered the voting age to 18.

So throughout our history, our understanding of who are “the people” and who should be allowed to vote has shifted.

And each expansion of voting rights has been met by skepticism by those in power.

In Some of the Reasons Against Woman Suffrage, Francis Parkman argued “Whatever liberty the best civilization may accord to women, they must always be subject to restrictions unknown to the other sex, and they can never dispense with the protecting influences which society throws about them.”

You can perhaps imagine some of Parkman’s supporting points: “everybody knows that the physical and mental constitution of woman is more delicate than in the other sex.”

In his five page pamphlet, Parkman argues over and over again that women are not fit to vote, that most do not want the vote, that giving them the vote would destroy the moral fabric of our society, that the right to vote is a “supreme device for developing the defects of women” which “demolish[s] their real power to build an ugly mockery instead.”

This history is particularly compelling, because as the definition of “the people” continues to expand, we continue to see similar arguments.

People under 18 shouldn’t vote because they aren’t capable of being informed voters. They shouldn’t have the right to vote because most young people don’t care about voting. They shouldn’t have the right to vote because it is our job to protect them and nurture them – giving them the right to vote would be like letting them vote on whether to have cake for dinner.

But such arguments have proven to be flawed.

Those are the rationalizations of a society that has gotten used to putting a segment of the population in it’s “proper” place. Changing that place may disrupt social norms, but history has shown that change to always be for the better.

Problematic Heroes

Posted on May 28, 2015 by Sarah Shugars

Heroes play an important role in our culture.

Whether they come in the form of celebrities, caregivers, or activists, heroes inspire us. They show us what a person can achieve, and they provide guidance – intentionally or not – on how a person should live.

There’s just one thing – heroes aren’t perfect.

None of us are perfect.

I tend to think of Gandhi as the quintessential problematic hero. He is widely revered and his words are often uttered as hallowed. As if we could truly build a better world if only we could internalize what it means to be the change you wish to see in the world.

But despite his near-saint status, Gandhi was not without his faults.

Speaking of Jews in World War II era German, Gandhi wrote:

And suffering voluntarily undergone will bring [Jews] an inner strength and joy which no number of resolutions of sympathy passed in the world outside Germany can…The calculated violence of Hitler may even result in a general massacre of the Jews by way of his first answer to the declaration of such hostilities. But if the Jewish mind could be prepared for voluntary suffering, even the massacre I have imagined could be turned into a day of thanksgiving and joy that Jehovah had wrought deliverance of the race even at the hands of the tyrant. For to the godfearing, death has no terror. It is a joyful sleep to be followed by a waking that would be all the more refreshing for the long sleep.

That’s some commitment to non-violence.

Furthermore, there is significant evidence that Gandhi was “a most dangerous, semi-repressed sex maniac.” It is certainly well documented that he preferred to sleep “naked next to nubile, naked women to test his restraint.”

I could go on with other problematic elements of Gandhi’s character and beliefs, but I think I’ll stop there.

The point is – the man was far from perfect.

And I don’t mean to pick on Gandhi. I suspect that under the surface of many of our revered, we’d find imperfections and flaws. Racism, dark elements of their past, or simply habits that would trouble our refined sensibilities.

There’s a reason why Jackie Robinson was selected as the first black major league baseball player:

The first black baseball player to cross the “color line” would be subjected to intense public scrutiny…the player would have to be more than a talented athlete to succeed. He would also have to be a strong person who could agree to avoid open confrontation when subjected to hostility and insults, at least for a few years.

And there’s a reason why Rosa Parks’ predecessors weren’t successful in launching the Montgomery Bus Boycott. 15 year-old Claudette Colvin, the first to be arrested for not moving to the back of the bus, was “too dark skinned, poor, and young to be a sympathetic plaintiff to challenge segregation.”

Activists Aurelia Browder, Susie McDonald, Mary Louise Smith and Jeanette Reese were similarly seen as not being the right icon for the movement.

But icons aren’t always selected by shrewd organizers, carefully crafting an effort to shift public opinion.

Sometimes these heroes just emerge.

And we should not be surprised to find them flawed.

Perhaps the Greeks were wise to see their gods as afflicted by the drama of human emotions; a hero always has his hubris.

And none of this is to say we should abandon our heroes – that we should be disappointed with their humanity and cast them aside for their flaws.

But we should see them not as a remote icons of perfection, but as whole people – struggling with their flaws just as we struggle with ours.

And then we much each decide whether we find a person’s failings forgivable – whether we can still find wisdom and insight in their words.

A Friend with Something in their Teeth

Posted on May 5, 2015 by Sarah Shugars

A good friend tells you when you have something in your teeth.

Or something on your face. Or when you are otherwise suffering from some minor oversight of what would generally be considered a proper way to conduct oneself.

I mean, I’m not judging, but I don’t think you intended to walk around with something in your teeth.

If that’s what you’re into, that’s fine. You get down with your bad self.

But generally people don’t want to walk around with something in their teeth.

So I thought you’d want to know.

I wish more feedback could be like something in your teeth.

It’s a little embarrassing in the moment, but in the end, everyone’s glad someone mentioned it. I mean, you can’t let someone go around all day like that.

And it’s not anything about them – anyone who eats has gotten something stuck in their teeth at one point or another.

And it’s not irreparable. You got something in your teeth – you grab some floss and get it out. No problem.

I wish more feedback could be like that.

In the words of Avenue Q, Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist, but being called out on racism feels a whole lot different from being called out on having something in your teeth.

One is certainly more offensive to others, but in a lot of ways it’s not that different.

Nobody frames everything perfectly all the time.

Nobody is free of bias.

We all say things we don’t mean to say. We all say things that are interpreted differently than we intended them to be.

And perhaps more insidiously, we all think things we wish we didn’t think.

But you have to admit that you thought it and admit that you said it. You have to learn from the experience and move through it.

After all, when someone says you’ve got something in your teeth, you shouldn’t tell them they are wrong – you should grab some floss and take care of it.

Discomfort with Ancestors

Posted on April 27, 2015 by Sarah Shugars

Years ago, my mother – who is really into genealogy – told me that one of my (white) ancestors had been lynched in the south because he’d been helping African Americans through the underground railroad.

I was so proud.

That’s the kind of person I wanted to be related to.

I, of course, don’t remember the details of what happened or how this person was related to me, but I remember – I’m descended from people who worked on the underground railroad. Folks who were on the right side of history. Who died for what they knew was just.

Several years after that, my mother was sharing another genealogical finding. It’s possible that I was not as attentive as a good daughter ought to be, until she said something that caught my ear. Something about an ancestor owning slaves.

No, no, I piped in. You told me that our family worked on the underground railroad!

My mother looked at me blankly as if I’d made the most nonsensical declaration she’d ever heard. Then she patiently explained to me that I was white – a fact she seemed to think had somehow eluded me.

Yes, yes, we have relatives who worked the underground railroad, she told me, but any white person whose family’s been in this country awhile is related to slave owners.

She hadn’t mentioned it before just as she hadn’t mentioned the sky was blue – it was obvious.

And yet there I was – a woman in my early 20s, just putting those pieces together.

There was a bit of a to-do last week about a certain actor who expunged his family’s slave-owning history from a genealogical documentary.

I can appreciate what he might have been thinking at the time – no, no, I’m not related to the bad guys.

Who would want to admit that?

The truth is, though, there is privilege even in that denial.

How many African Americans, do you suppose, who know their family has lived in this country for generations, tell themselves – no, no, my ancestors weren’t brought to this country as slaves.

Between 1525 and 1866, 12.5 million Africans were shipped to the New World with an estimated 450,000 Africans arriving in the United States over the course of the slave trade.

I’m not sure that’s a piece of their past they have the luxury of denying.

Not as easily as I can casually claim ignorance of my own family’s slave-owning past, at least.

It’s important to recognize this history. To accept it.

The truth is – I didn’t work on the underground railroad and I didn’t own slaves. Those people are in my history, but they are not me.

I can’t claim divinity from one relative’s actions while claiming absolution from another’s. I have to make my own path, make my own choices. Informed by my history but not bound by it.

Indeed, we are all shaped by our past – but we are not doomed to repeat it.

Time to Write

Posted on April 23, 2015 by Sarah Shugars

A friend of mine recently asked for advice on finding time to blog – on taking the ideas that percolate around in your head and actually getting them down on (virtual) paper.

It’s possible that I’m not the best person to respond to this question – I have been writing most of my life, and I journaled daily long before I took to a more public medium. So it does take me time to write, but it doesn’t take me that much time.

I typically spend 30 minutes to an hour on each post. Sometimes longer – particularly if my writing is punctuated by interruptions from other parts of my life. Which is always. (I’ve already walked away from this post three times, and I’m hardly three paragraphs in!)

More broadly, though, I find the issue of “time” to be a red herring.

That is, “I don’t have time,” is often a cover – at least for me – for other issues. Sometimes it simply means, “I don’t have time…because I am prioritizing other things.”

But for me the issue with writing is different. I love to write. I am happy to find time for it and to prioritize it in my life. And yet for years I told myself that I didn’t have time to write publicly.

For me, I’d say, there are two things that are hard about blogging.

The first is what I called the ego of public life in my inaugural post. Acting publicly – speaking publicly, writing publicly, existing in any way within the public sphere – takes agency. It’s not only feeling like you have something to say, but…feeling like you have a right to say it.

Like there’s a value to saying it.

A lot of people don’t have that. I know I didn’t.

There’s no reason to make time for an activity that has no value.

The second challenge is that blogging, as I’ve taken to saying, requires a willingness to be imperfect in public.

Writing is such a personal act. It’s a quiet art that bears your soul and tries to express it through a powerful, but ultimately imperfect, means.

I’ve been a prolific writer throughout my life, but until recently, I shared relatively little of that writing with others. When I did share a piece, it was only those few which I had worked on extensively – which I had written and rewritten until I felt they truly conveyed what I was trying to say.

There’s no luxury to do that when it comes to blogging.

Then you really won’t have the time. You can’t spend whole days on one post when you’ve got other things to do in life. You have to just write what comes out and hope for the best.

In the nearly two years I’ve been blogging, I’ve written a few posts that I’m really proud of, and I’ve written a fair number of posts that that I’m not too terribly embarrassed by. But I’ve also written a lot of posts scraped together from reused text or other things I’ve stumbled across.

A lot of days are just mediocre, but…I’d rather accept those days than miss out on the good ones.

That’s really hard to do. It’s really hard to not put your best foot forward, to do what you can and accept whatever comes out. It’s hard to be imperfect in public.

Those may be my own challenges. I imagine other people have issues of their own.

So I guess my advice to anyone wondering how to find the “time to write” is this –

Make a commitment to how often you will write and stick with it. No matter how you feel about the writing, stick to your commitment.

And spend some time thinking to yourself – what does it mean to not have the time? What are you prioritizing instead? What ideas or concerns about the process give you pause?

Figure out why you don’t have the time…then get over it.

(Or not. You know, whatever you’re in to. I won’t judge.)

The Politics of Public Restrooms

Posted on April 2, 2015 by Sarah Shugars

There’s something deeply political about public restrooms.

First, as the name implies, these spaces are public. Private, perhaps, once inside, the public restroom is inherently part of the public sphere.

Truly, they are shared spaces.

At some point I will post a treatise praising co-created wall art in public restrooms – commonly referred to as graffiti – but today I’d actually like to take the conversation in a different direction.

As my mother recently informed me, the first public women’s restroom in Britain were opened in 1909 as part of the revolutionary Selfridges department store in London.

To get a sense of that in time, let’s back up to get a broader history of public restrooms in Western culture.

As it turns out, the bodily functions which inspire restrooms have been an element of human nature for quite some time. The Romans, who pioneered architectural innovations such as aqueducts and roads, are often credited with the public restroom as well – a feature that could be found in many Roman baths.

But the modern public toilet revolution really began in the early 19th century. Paris had public restrooms as early as 1820. London installed it’s first flushing public toilet in 1852.

That’s right – London had public toilets by 1852, but the first restroom allowing women wasn’t opened until 1909.

As my mother put it, “Before that, if a woman had to use the restroom – she would just go home.”

I’m not sure that’s entirely accurately – that is, I’m not sure how much women were wandering around town before then. Also, in 1852 I imagine it would be challenging for a woman to go to the bathroom by themselves – due to the layers and complexity of a Victorian woman’s clothing.

By 1909 women’s fashion was changing, public attitudes towards women were changing, and a young entrepreneur named Harry Gordon Selfridge introduced a new department store concept. One that included “entertainment, restaurants and services. Customers were invited to spend the day inside at their leisure and buy at their pleasure.”

And those shopping women clearly needed somewhere to pee.

Fast forward another 100 years and we finally have gender parity in restroom availability.

But not really.

We have men’s rooms and we have women’s rooms.

And anyone who doesn’t identify with one of those categories – or who identifies with a category other than what strangers judge them to be – has a serious problem.

For example, a proposed bill in Florida would prevent transgender Floridians from using the restroom of their choice.

And the brilliant hashtag #IJustNeedToPee details the struggles people in the trans community face every day as they are shunned from public restrooms.

Like the women of 1850, if the need to use the restroom – they just have to go home, I suppose.

So public restrooms say a lot about us as a culture – how we define gender, how we expect identified genders to act. Not to mention how we feel about race and cross-cultural interaction.

It seems like such a small thing, so simple, so innocuous – but nothing says you’re not welcome to stay like the lack of a restroom you are welcomed to use.

So lets make public restrooms truly accessible to all members of the public – of all genders, gender identities, and physical abilities.

Let’s have the public in public restroom truly mean its for everyone – not just some segment of the population deemed worthy for such a throne.