Word: freedmen
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...into our national identity and cultural consciousness that we refuse to believe that some people will get lucky and some people won’t. The specific purpose of Frederick Douglass’s speech—often glossed over in history books—was to argue that freedmen ought to be given equal opportunities for success, and that they should jump at those opportunities when they presented themselves. We forget that ultimately even Douglass concludes that “properly speaking, there are in the world no such men as self-made men...We have all either begged...
...Freedmen have tried to use the mainstream media to turn this into a racial issue. After all, it makes great sensational news and sells newspapers. But the truth is that those Freedmen who have Cherokee ancestors shall now and forever remain Cherokee citizens. It is only those who cannot prove Cherokee ancestry who lost their right to citizenship...
...excluding members because of race, the Cherokee are engaging in the very practices they object to in the U.S. They are acting as an overbearing authority determined to tell you the freedmen who they are, who their ancestors were, and with whom they identify. If that’s self-determination, then maybe the Cherokee Nation and their sovereignty need to be reevaluated...
Fortunately, the American government has the ability to respond with force. The Seminole tribe decided similarly in a 2000 vote to exclude its freedmen descendants, but the action was short-lived. With the mere threat to remove federal funding, the American government forced the Seminoles’ hand, restoring the freedmen their much-deserved citizenship. If the government were to reissue this threat against the Cherokee, the freedmen would likely be reinstated, even if only out of Cherokee self-interest...
...course, we can’t legislate racist attitudes out of existence, but we can give Cherokee freedmen the choice of whether to remain in the home of their cultural legacy and identity or whether to abandon a nation that has shown them little humanity...