Bros before Hos?

Just found out that black men had the right to vote, by law, in the US [1870] before women [1920]

Whats with that? American men are more scared of giving rights to women than to blacks?

Or is this a trend in societies? Does this explain why Obama was more saleable than Hillary?

 

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Fixated with the U.S much?

 

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You can jump in with any other society, I'm just wondering if this is how it is in most societies.

 

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Well, it all sounds good, but the blacks weren't actually permitted to actually and really vote, not for real, until long after women voted regularly. Don't you know the history of the black oppression in the USA, SAM? I mean, you of all people, should be hammering the USA for their treatment of the blacks.

Geez, I'm damned disappointed in you, SAM, ...another perfect thing to hammer away at Americans and you've let it slip through your fingers! Shame on you. How can you hate Americans without knowing everything in their sordid history?

Baron Max

 

SAM? Don't you have to be a female to be a ho? Is SAM a female? Geez, I don't know, but I don't think so. SAM is too fuckin' hateful to be female, ain't she/he?

Baron Max

 

Holy shit! I should invest in something rightaway, I'm a bloody prophet just now.

I'm talking about law. But thanks thats interesting to know, and no I don't know the history of suffrage in the US. So why were women exempted from voting in the beginning?

 

This is NOT the usual S.A.M post. This is NOT S.A.M so we dont really know what S.A.M is.

 

Alzheimer acting up? Man, with 18K posts you don't know this much. Sam is a 35 year old widowed taxidriver with 2 kids from Ravalpindi...

 

Because a woman's place is in the home caring for the children, taking care of the house and cooking the meals for the man of the house. And if we'd held to that standard, the world would be a much better place in which to live!

The worst mistake in all of human history was giving women any fuckin' rights other than in her own home.

Baron Max

 

Dang...I bet the chicks at "NOW" just love the HAIL outta you.

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Yeah, those broads at NOW just can't handle the truth!

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Baron Max

 

Preservation of political authority

"Remember the ladies" is a legendary slogan of the early history of the United States. Abigail Adams, wife of future President John Adams, thus beseeched her husband as he and other luminaries of Revolution-era lore pondered the nation these forlorn colonies sought to be. The plea fell on deaf ears, however. In the social conscience of our newfound nation, women were not people.

The Fourteenth Amendment guarantees that,

No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.​

One would think this provision would guarantee women the right to vote, although even for blacks that right demanded a separate constitutional amendment, the Fifteenth.

And yet, as noted, it took until 1920 for Congress and the several States to get around to the Nineteenth Amendment, which granted women the right to vote.

However, the Nineteenth Amendment was not so pioneering. Utah, of all places, was among the early states that granted women the right to vote. The first period of women's suffrage in Utah opened in 1870, but was revoked by Congress in 1887. In 1895, Utah restored the right of women to vote. Strangely, both the granting and revocation of suffrage to women played around issues of polygamy. Jean Bickmore White explains,

The historical record suggests that it was not fear of women, per se, that motivated anti-suffrage arguments. Rather, it had to do with fears about political power and the state of society. Indeed, Grace Saxon Mills, writing of the British situation, included in her argument against women's suffrage that women were not capable of the responsibilities of full citizenship, women had no interest in the vote, women were "perfectly safe in the hands of men", and the equality of the sexes would "destroy chivalrous consideration". John Ray, writing retrospectively in 1971, pointed out that, "In 1900, few women were householders or lodgers. If the vote were given to them, then it would have to be given also to men who were not householders or lodgers." (Qtd. in Clare.) In 1911, Sen. J. B. Sanford, the Chairman of the Democratic Caucus in Texas, wrote that "Suffrage is not a right." Women could do no good," Sanford wrote, "gadding the streets and neglecting her children"; women could not "unsex" themselves or alter their social spheres—"Let her be content with her lot and perform those high duties intended for her by the Great Creator, and she will accomplish far more in governmental affairs that she can ever accomplish by mixing up in the dirty pool of politics."

Calling on Abraham, one Lyman Abbot wrote in 1903 that the vote was part of a man's business: "These families find it for their mutual advantage to engage in separate industries, and exchange the product of their labor". The differences between men and women rendered talk of equality "but idle words, without a meaning".

Compared to Abbott, Sanford's sentiments of "courageous, chivalrous, and manly men and the womanly women" seem almost benign.

The underlying fear was that in granting women the right to vote, the neat social order in which sociopolitical power was vested in as few hands as possible would be upended, and society thrown into chaos as a result. Abbott saw a form of equality between men and women, but that equality did not extend to representation under the law. It is a curiously convenient definition: You are my equal as long as I am superior to you.

And that, for over a century, was good enough for Americans. It is part of our heritage, a cultural meme that persists in subtle forms even today. As we run out of domestic groups against which to apply this perverse equality—we're down to homosexuals and the transgendered at present—we are focusing outward against other cultures in foreign lands. At present, the Bush administration effectively holds Muslims as subhuman, for the same equality that should have protected women has been denied those suspected, even dubiously, of participating in international terrorism. This is a pattern we will repeat over and over, perhaps never learning the lesson, until we run out of people to dehumanize. Even then, though, one must wonder what we'll come up with.
____________________

Notes:

United States Constitution. http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/index.html

White, Jean Bickmore. "Women's Suffrage in Utah". Utah History to Go. Accessed November 6, 2008. http://historytogo.utah.gov/utah_ch...the_progressive_era/womenssuffrageinutah.html

Clare, John D. "Arguments against Women's Suffrage". Accessed November 6, 2008. http://www.johndclare.net/Women1_ArgumentsAgainst.htm

Sanford, Sen. J. B. "Argument Against Women's Suffrage, 1911". 1911. LearnCalifornia.org. Accessed November 6, 2008. http://www.learncalifornia.org/doc.asp?id=1646

Abbott, Lyman. "Why Women Do Not Wish the Suffrage". 1903. About.com. Accessed November 6, 2008. http://womenshistory.about.com/gi/d...theatlantic.com/issues/03sep/0309suffrage.htm

 

Didn't at one time, they use poll taxes and literacy tests to prevent freed blacks from voting?

 

Thats a very interesting perspective. Was this pattern followed in other western countries? We inherited the British system so never went through this procedure of decision making.

 

Variations on a theme

It's a particular manifestation of xenophobia. While xenophobia is practically universal, the question of this manifestation is another issue entirely. While I cannot at present give you much for a specific answer, I think it safe to say that variations on this theme exist wherever human political structures are found.

 

SAM im sorry but so what which came first?

it wasnt untill 1967 that the aborigional people of australia were concidered to be PEOPLE under the constition rather than fauna

http://www.foundingdocs.gov.au/amendment.asp?amID=17

it was 1902 when women in NSW recived the vote but aborigionals wernt given the right to vote (even though compulsery voting was inacted in 1929 in NSW) until 1962 (and it was vollentry, i dont know if it still is) and they were still excluded from state elections

http://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/Barani/themes/theme3.htm

personally i wish that aborigionals had been fully recognised BEFORE women because there opression was worse. This isnt to say that i disagree with giving women the right to vote or equal protection but rather that women were never treated as fauna and this was the worse crime.

 

this is an artical from the SA perspective
http://www.parliament.sa.gov.au/AboutParliament/History/AboriginalAustraliansandParliament/

 

Well in the end it all worked out for the best.

 

Wouldn't it be awesome if you could use modern polling techniques to find out what an 1870's white male really thought...

(pardon my use of non-pc language)

Reporter: Excuse me, Mister white male, sir..may I ask you question?

1870's white dude: Certainly sir!

Reporter: If you had to choose between giving the right to vote to stupid niggers or dumb broads...which would you chose?

1870's white dude: (strokes beard) Hmmm...that's a toughie...can I vote "none of the above?"

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Edit: Wait!!! I just realized we have our own time machine right here at sciforums...so Baron...if you had to choose?

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j/k