Freedom to humans is the ability to do what one
wants and when they want. But over time as humans became civilization, we
learned that there is a price to be paid for this freedom as such, rules and
regulations had to be put into placed to avoid to much freedom for people. But
there was another problem because could one group have the same rights as
another? No one knew the answer at the time until freedom to their equal
rights, were fought for by the people of the social group to gain the same
freedom as other groups. Freedom means different things to different people but
the general idea is that all people of all races, religions, sexes, etc. are
granted to do the same thing as people of the other groups without any
restrictions. Throughout history it wasn’t always the case, and there are still
places around the world where certain freedoms in specific groups is forbidden
or restricted, such as the freedom to vote, marry the same0sex, religious
freedom, etc. But why do different understandings of freedom emerge over time
and what are the effects of these changes within society and are they
considered to be important? Freedom has different understandings of the concept
because no one can properly interpret it and as a result can lead to strong
conversations over what are the boundaries to freedom.
Throughout history, freedom seems to be
privileged to people who have earned it or born into it. In the United States
for example, people take freedom very seriously because our ancestors had
fought a war over the chance to gain their freedom from another country. Thus
Americans have since become a symbol of brining justice and freedom to other
countries but not always within our own country. In the 1830’s women were
excluding from the freedom of voting, immigrants were granted to freedom to
vote, former slaves were allowed to vote but as the expansion of freedoms were
granted to white men, there were some groups that became excluded thus causing
the dividing line to be drawn over race rather than class as to who can vote in
this example.
Due to the strong protest in years to come from
the different social groups, there caused an uprising on who can gain their
freedoms or not. The women’s rights movement caused women’s suffrage in the
early decades of the 1900’s; that allowed women in the US the right to vote.
The civil rights movement in 1950-1960s, allowed African Americans in the U.S.
to be recognized as U.S. citizens and to be granted the same rights and
freedoms without racial segregation and discrimination. The most recent one was
the same sex marriage ruling the US that allowed people of the same sex to get
married.
But what were the effects of these changes in
freedom? It allowed people who belonged to a certain group to gain more
privileges and freedoms than people in other groups. The idea of dominant and
subordinate groups is present throughout American history because as discussed
in The Complexity of Identities by
Beverly Tatum; Dominant
groups in America are described as “white, thin, male, young, heterosexual, Christian
and financially secure. Whereas the targeted groups are considered to be
females, people of color, the LBGTQ community, other faiths, disabilities and
un- financially secure, etc.” Thus by giving people of the subordinate groups
the ability to have the same freedoms as people in the dominant groups allows
Americans to become more free in a sense. This is very important in todays’
society to understand what exactly it took for these people in the past had to
work for and struggle for in order to obtain the freedoms that others take for granted.
What Americans
don’t understand is how ironic they are when it comes to freedom because in the
Declaration of Independence it says “We
hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they
are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these
are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Now judging based on that
quote, it says that all men are created equal but the time period was 1776 and
the only men that were considered equal were: white, male, owned property, etc.
This excludes all other groups from the same freedoms as the other groups, or
in this context the subordinate groups from the dominant groups. Although over
time, changes would be made to the Constitution and the Bill Rights over the
ability for subordinate groups to be granted the same freedom as the dominant
groups.
This leads to Americans to
view themselves as the same as other people from other countries because even
though Americans say that they expressed freedom and want to spread it, they
are in turn suppressing people of their own country just the same as other
countries would do their own people. So it becomes the issue over is America
really spreading the freedom that it so rightfully says that it is? No, not
really because over the course of history, the “dominant” Americans have
suppressed the “subordinate” Americans from the same rights and freedoms that
the “dominant” Americans have so easily been granted. Thus from this, one can
assume that freedom doesn’t necessarily mean the same thing to other people
because when one groups says that they are being suppressed from another group,
what they really mean is that they haven’t been granted the same rights and
freedoms that the other group and is subjected to discrimination. Americans
need to fix the problems that they have on the homestead first before they go
to other countries and help them because how can Americans say that they
express freedom when they themselves don’t in the first place to other
Americans?
Documents/websites used:
