I am an originalist and I make no apologies. There are some that would have you believe that because of this, I too am a racist. That is because these same people believe that the constitution itself is inherently racist. To believe this is to ignore history and the intent of our founding fathers. Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that there haven’t been some racially bias interpretations of the constitution or that there haven’t been laws that were outright racist, but our constitution is not. In fact, our constitution was written in such a way, to allow us to grow away from such racial biases. Our founding fathers believed in “A More Perfect Union” which is why they put some of the phrasing in the Constitution that they did.
Let’s begin this conversation by talking about out founding fathers. It is true that some of them owned slaves. Slavery was then, and throughout all world history, a common practice. Slavery was even common practice during Biblical times, and not once was the practice ever condemned. There were many ways to become a slave, and not all were diabolical. It wasn’t about the practice that God condemned, it was the unjust treatment. God teaches us to treat all of mankind fairly, justly, and with respect, this includes slaves. Even Job, one of the most holy men in the bible had slaves. And treated them with respect.
Our founding fathers believed that slavery should be stopped, and that it violated the very principals they were building this nation upon, that “All Men are Created Equal”. By “Men” it should be “Mankind”. They believed that “Freedom” was more important than “Slavery”. Believe me, I see the irony in this, but since they need the support of all the colonial states, including the southern ones, whose economy was in agriculture that was heavily dependent on slaves, they felt that conquering the constitution was more important than conquering slavery. By believing in “A More Perfect Union” they knew that, as a nation, we would grow, and become better. This is why in the Declaration of Independence they changed some of the verbiage to accommodate such growth. Originally, the Unalienable rights were written as Life, Liberty, and Property. They chose to change the verbiage to “Pursuit of Happiness” because they didn’t want the debate to be about weather a slave was a person or property. By eliminating property, they acknowledge that a slave is entitled to all three, Life, Liberty, and Happiness. So, just to be clear, the Constitution supports Freedom, not Slavery.
Another claim I hear often about the constitution is that it promotes sexism. Again, this is something that is simply not true. Read the Constitution, in its intirety it uses gender neutral terms. Nowhere do you see a non-gender-neutral word for a person. In fact, the only place where you will see one is in the Declaration of Independence where it uses the word men. “All Men are created equal”. In this usage, Men, is being used in the generic for Mankind. This is a generic often used in the Bible, and widely agreed upon that it should be considered a generic for mankind.
Nothing in the Constitution can be considered to be either racist or sexist, but that is not to say that it hasn’t been interpreted in that way, or that laws have not been written that were. Neither of these should reflect negatively against the Constitution or the founders.
Our founding fathers knew that we were flawed. They also believed that we could be better, that as a nation and a people we could grow. The Constitution wasn’t the end, it was merely the beginning. It was the foundation that our very freedom was built upon. This is why the Constitution is a very short document. Short, simple, and to the point. It was made this way so that the issues of the time could be taken care of by the people in the time.