Americans should not act surprised by the actions, executive orders and plans that the current president has initiated since returning to the White House. Throughout his campaign and even during Joe Biden’s four years at the helm, President Donald Trump emphatically expressed his views and shared his agenda.
Still, it’s hard to fathom that the Supreme Court would side with the president on the birthright citizenship issue. But they have. And with that, they have opened a Pandora’s box that could transform our country into a place that our parents would not recognize nor prefer.
Back in 2018, the president referred to birthright citizenship as a “crazy policy. Then, in 2019, he said he was reviewing the policy “very seriously.”
Study after study conducted by objective and apolitical organizations have determined that changing this fundamental right would lead to the creation of a subclass of individuals in the U.S. It would take an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to eliminate birthright citizenship from the rights and privileges to which all Americans are entitled.
But the Supreme Court also has the ability to overturn the centuries-old precedent that interprets the 14th Amendment. That’s where we are today.
During the days of slavery, Black people were viewed only as property, like animals or land or inanimate items. Later, a Black individual would be legally considered as 3/5ths of a person. It would take a constitutional amendment and a Supreme Court that had the moral integrity to right a wrong that had maintained white supremacy for centuries.
Finally, African Americans began to believe that they, too, could achieve the American dream.
Langston Hughes considered America’s snail-like move towards racial equality, and the need for African Americans to remain resilient, in his poem, “I, Too.” In the poem, the speaker asserts his own worth and looks to a future where he or she will be fully accepted and treated as an equal:
Tomorrow,
I’ll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody’ll dare
Say to me,
‘Eat in the kitchen,’
Then.
Besides,
They’ll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed —
I, too, am America.
This is the America that today’s rank and file in the three branches of government want to destroy.
Shame on them and all of us for allowing such an injustice to even be considered.