David J. Bodenhamer
Författare till The U.S. Constitution: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)
Om författaren
David J. Bodenhamer is the founder and Executive Director of the Polis Center, Professor of History, and Adjunct Professor of Informatics at Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis. He is the author and editor of several books on American legal and constitutional history, including Fair visa mer Trial: Rights of the Accused in American History and Our Rights. visa färre
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Verk av David J. Bodenhamer
The Spatial Humanities: GIS and the Future of Humanities Scholarship (2010) — Redaktör — 39 exemplar
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…. I mean, I know that once when I lived in the femme mystique village, I happened to hear an old white man say, I don’t care if we have an immigrant woman doctor—but I also want people to know that we have the Constitution!— And having kinda a Disney brain at the time, I couldn’t sparse what he was trying to tell his friends, you know.
Aside from that, aside from purely conservative/liberal things, the constitution is obviously also the product of the ‘majority’ culture in a wider sense; it’s ‘the rules’. The majority American culture obviously affects practically everybody, even most people outside the United States. And it’s not going anywhere; it’s not going to disappear into fairy dust, you know—even after white Americans are less than 50% of the country, the majority culture will still be here. White minorities have been the dominant group in various colonies and even ex-colonies, even if they’re a little less secure in the saddle than numerical majorities. (And the core culture has only changed slightly since the old days, as the very hopeless insecurity of most radicals pays a sort of testament to.) America has a constitution, and the majority aren’t going to toss it overboard all of a sudden, you know.
I’m not saying that people shouldn’t have to learn about slavery, you know. Slavery is real. Slavery and the constitution both matter, right. And they intersect. They’re part of the same story. But certainly the majority thinks in terms of ‘the rules’ as the normative thing, even when certain groups only exist at the margins of that story…. And I’m saying that even the perspective that puts the center at the center and the margins at the margins, even when that isn’t fair, has /some/ legitimacy, you know. All perspectives matter. I’m saying that no true change results from /gratuitously/ making the majority culture afraid or uncomfortable, you know—
(punk singer) The Constitution is gay! The Constitution is gay! (head banging) Okay! (starts doing sexual hand gestures during the drum solo)
America has a constitution….
And although I’m white—I’m not saying that (a) there’s a One True POV, and (b) it’s mine—even I often have to remember, being as weird or whatever as I am, that the majority culture also has a story, too….
But what are you gonna do. I remember Dr. Hew Len—the Hawaiian guy in the book ‘Zero Limits’—told people he had made an agreement with himself that if he ever got through a whole day—one, whole, day—without having a single judgmental thought—not even /one/, /thought/—he would eat so much ice cream that he’d practically have to get sick—but he could never get through a whole day.
And he’s a Hawaiian guru, you know.
…. All nations have a collective aspect, although the American nation is relatively individualist. I guess the debate about this is necessary today, because on the one hand totally ignoring the collective aspect usually just leaves in place the injustices created by our imperfect history of liberty, whereas on the other hand, an individualist country that agrees on less now than it used to obviously has a need for the private sphere as well.… (mer)