a partial, history of voices silenced

It is important to remember
our human tendency to oppress...
our willingness
and sometimes skill to
silence those deemed
less than...
whatever it is we deem
they are less than.

A partial history of voices silenced in the U.S.A.

Indigenous persons living in the land eventually called North America

Voices speak: "The white people, who are trying to make us over into their image, they want us to be what they call "assimilated," bringing the Indians into the mainstream and destroying our own way of life and our own cultural patterns. - The 1927 Grand Council of American Indians

Pre-Civil War slaves in America

A Voice: If we accept and acquiesce in the face of discrimination, we accept the responsibility ourselves and allow those responsible to salve their conscience by believing that they have our acceptance and concurrence. We should, therefore, protest openly everything . . . that smacks of discrimination or slander. - Mary McLeod Bethune

Post-Civil War African Americans

A voice: The power of the ballot we need in sheer defense, else what shall save us from a second slavery? - W.E.B Du Bois

Japanese living in America post Pearl Harbor

A voice: And it seems to me important for a country, for a nation to certainly know about its glorious achievements but also to know where its ideals failed, in order to keep that from happening again. - George Takei

Women in America prior to the passage of 19th Amendment

A voice: The women of this country ought be enlightened in regard to the laws under which they live, that they may no longer publish their degradation by declaring themselves satisfied with their present position, nor their ignorance, by asserting that they have all the rights they want. - Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Mexican migrant workers in the early 1900's -

Because these workers were forced to settle into communities that did not want them, and in communities that were promised the Mexicans were only staying temporarily, Mexicans were segregated, victimized, and resented by the surrounding white population. This maltreatment eventually escalated into racial oppression comparable to that of the blacks in the Jim Crow south.

A voice: We cannot seek achievement for ourselves and forget about the progress and prosperity for our community. Our ambitions must be broad enough to include the aspirations and needs of others, for their sakes and for our own. - Cesar E. Chavez

Don't Ask Don't tell - one of a number of oppressive acts towards Gay Americans.

A voice: The policy is an absurdity and borderline on being an obscenity. What it does is cause people to ask of themselves that they lie to themselves, that they pretend to be something that they are not. - Former Secretary of the Army/Clifford Alexander