Activism V. Conservatism: A Battle on The Domestic Front

W.E.B. Du Bois as quoted in the, The Emergence of the Civil Rights Movement, said, “it is a fight for ideals, lest this, our common fatherland, false to its founding, become in truth the land of the thief and the home of the Slave” (Goldfield 262). Through hindsight we can see that these words, though stated many years before, were like a premonition towards the future state of America. Our fight for ideals through activism is what makes us have any rights at all, but “in truth,” what we have is not really much. Through implementations of various programs which we see as helpful, this hierarchical system has made us weak in our efforts to rise against its predominantly Conservative counterpart. Over time we have become blinded by the programs put in front of us that are meant to suppress the masses. We have accepted these programs as gifts, not realizing that by having them successfully implemented we are just like a crying child who has been given a pacifier. By accepting the Conservatives in power, we are doing nothing. We have become pacified. Why change a system that has so much going for it? Our fight for “ideals” has been given up and we are living in the delusion that our society is free when in fact we are living in, “the land of the thief and the home of the Slave”.

Works Cited

Alexander, Michelle. “The New Jim Crow,” in The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the

Age of Colorblindness, p. 173-208.

Chavez, Leo. “The Minuteman Project’s Spectacle of Surveillance on the Arizona-Mexico

Border,” in The Latino Threat: Constructing Immigrants, Citizens, and the Nation. (2008), p.132-151.

Goldfield, Michael. “The Emergence of the Civil Rights Movement,” in The Color of Politics:

Race And the Mainsprings of American Politics (1997), p. 262-287 (287-295 optional).

Maclean, Nancy. “Conservatives Shift From Massive Resistance to Color-Blindness,” in  

Freedom is Not Enough: The Opening of the American Workplace, p. 225-249.