My Iron Constitution

My Iron Constitution

As a Black female, when I think of the Constitution of the United States of America, I automatically think of what I have heard in school. What doesn’t come to mind are personal discussions with my family about the Constitution and what it does for me. In my own experiences, people who live, work, and relax in or below a certain economic/social class don’t think about the government the same as those who are better off. So when I think of the Constitution, I think of what my teachers have told me time and again about its creation, who it pissed off and why, and most importantly, how the people who wrote it meant for it to be changed with the times. I think of these things, because all of my personal discussions about my rights and the rights of people that I’m actually familiar with are negative. For example, in most of my discussions I’ve had outside the classroom, it is the said the Constitution is least considerate of its minority and female citizens. So in writing this paper, I have to question the times: both the times in around which it is was written, first ratified, as well as today.
The Constitution of the United States of America was completed and ratified in 1787. This means in a few generations, these men became capable of creating a ruling power that would suffice not only while society changed, but when more land was gained. These men were genius in that they knew to make their ultimate allegiance to this document, instead of to any actual presiding body or group. In the American government, the Constitution is the only existing level of government in which ALL citizens of this country must bow to, but which no citizen could ever have power over. This means that the United States took approximately 150 years to advance from the Mayflower compact, when they were still citizens of King James, to creating a changeable Supreme law to run a country.

According to chapter one of the book, the creators of the Constitution decided to simply leave out the issue of slavery. The earliest known evidence of slavery based on race in America occurs almost 200 years before the constitution was written. These men knew that slaves in America were truly African American, no longer African slaves in America by this time. These men knew that these slaves had been there since before it had ever occurred to their father’s fathers to be independent. These men knew that slavery had become so systematic, that no slave knew where he had originally come from, his original religion or language, nor did any slave usually nurse a fantasy about going back to a foreign land where they no longer looked like the non-whites either. These men understood already, for better or worse, that slaves and their descendants were America’s problem. Yet, when the time came to write the Constitution, they chose to ignore the issue completely. Speaking from my own personal experience, I feel like this single decision is what set the precedent for the only flaw in the Constitution; how it is implemented today.

Looking over the one of the most famous documents in the world, I agree with the majority of people that it is mostly perfect. The first three articles ordain three branches of government that aim to serve the people collectively and individually: the legislative branch, the executive branch, and the judicial branch. The legislative branch to directly represent the people and make laws, the judicial branch to settle disputes and set precedents, and the executive branch to keep up our laws and our defense. This idea in itself is already good. Giving each branch control of some of each of the other branch’s power is what makes it briliant! This check and balance system is the core of the Constitution, and the reason that it is considered superior to other structures of government. The Constitution outlines what power each branch has specifically, which veto power the branches have over each other, as well as where the limit of federal government (the three branches) is expected to stop and state government to start.

The Constitution states “All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States.” This Congress is made up of two chambers, a House of Representatives and a Senate. The House contains representatives based on the population of a state and the Senate contains an equal amount of representatives per state. These two chambers make up the complete legislative branch and they must each cast a majority vote in order to pass a law or veto a law on their part. The second article addresses the executive branch of the government, the office of the president. This office, according to the Constitution, is provided so that the law may be carried out and that so our military forces may always have a chief commander. The Constitution guarantees that no president shall have any absolute rights or any type of unlimited power. Finally, the third article addresses the Judaical branch, an especially intricate part of the Constitution. It allows the power of the courts to flow vertically. If a decision can’t decided in a municipal court , it can eventually be put to the Supreme court of the United States, where their decision is not only final, its precedent. As it stands today, and when the Constitution was written, any natural born citizen can be voted into any of these branches. For this reason alone, because of what is supposed to be able to happen specifically stated in the document, I do not believe the Constitution needs to be changed.

This is where the problem comes in. For the Constitution to work perfectly, any natural born citizen should be able to reasonably be able to achieve any of these offices. This is not the case for many reasons. First, it took quite a amendments before every human born on American soil was thought to be included in the Constitution. After the Bill of Rights balanced individual rights more equally against the government, it still took a while for both Blacks, and then women to be included as citizens. According to history, the only reasons for withholding citizenship against the people solely responsible for raising America’s white males, was prejudice and popular opinion. Stay-at-home dad’s were not a popular concept ever, not even today. Something that was popular, however, was for white families to hire Black nannies to raise their children. This is the sole problem that prevents the Constitution from working as it should today. While each branch of the government is supposed to do their job based what is best for the people, they usually do what is considered the least abrasive. An example of this gay marriage. According to the Constitution, marriage should fall under religious practices because it does indeed have different rules and practices between religions. Also, it is not specifically limited to a man and a woman in every religion, so it should be untouchable by the federal government. However, it is actually defined as a union between a man and a woman according to American law. The debate caused by more and more homosexual couples wishing to be married is that people’s marriage practices would have no effect on the government or the country. Politicians who disagree, and receive support, have been able to do so on the basis of how it will effect their children and popular culture. This is a direct violation of the Constitution. There is no scientific evidence that gay marriage would harm anyone, therefor banning it can only be a matter of not wanting to change a traditionally, well traditional, document.
When the practice of running a country based on what is wanted, instead of what is needed becomes the norm, there are much worse consequences than not allowing couple to finalize their union. In truth, if that couple is well off, they can go anywhere that does allow gay couples to marry, get a marriage license, and go back home. One notices that the only people who really suffer when a government bases their rule off of popularity are the lower classes. Many of the main issues in our country, such as education, nutrition, and violence, truly only effect those who don’t have the resources to get away from them.

Education, for example, is a something that our government states is guaranteed to each child. If you take a look at the inner cities around the United States, a vast difference can be seen between those public schools and schools in higher income neighborhoods. Public schools in the United States are funded by taxpayers in their districts. If that particular district has a high unemployment rate, then there won’t be much money going back into the schools. So basically, because of decisions that adults make, a district’s worth of children would go to school kindergarten through twelfth grade at a poor excuse for a school. In many places. half the kids don’t graduate, then end up growing to make the same decisions the adults before them made, most likely living in that same neighborhood. And just with gay marriage, only those who have the money and resources can send their kids to learn at a better school, while still allowing them to live and grow in their community. This is another direct violation of the Constitution. Kids are not receiving a quality education through no fault of their own; our Supreme law states that it is their right to do so. In order to fix this, the government would have to revamp the whole education system. They would have to put the schools that are failing first, meaning putting more money and time into them. By allowing individual communities to take that responsibility into their hands, he government doesn’t have to take responsibility when a whole economic class fails, district by district.

An important example is nutrition. Only 40-50 years ago, most Americans ate real food with real ingredients for their meals throughout the day. Today, that is very far from the truth. A large portion of Americans eat processed food with ingredients added to make it cheaper to produce and easier to store for long periods of time. The consumption of theses ingredients has led to a jump in the health problems of many of America’s lower economic class citizens. Disregarding the possible connections between cancer, the use of things like high fructose corn syrup and trans fat had led to an increase in heart and weight problems in many Americans. Many people fail to realize that these problems effect citizens of a lower economic class because our food market has allowed processed food to become the most easily available. Fresh food has become increasingly expensive. This is another indirect violation of our Constitution. Just as alcohol and tobacco have been studied over time to be harmful and cause illness, so do these new ingredients in our food. It should not be acceptable to our government that the food most readily available to the people who don’t have time to work out, or eat right, is the most dangerous and unhealthy food of all. Spending $100 on fresh fruits, veggies, bread and milk would buy considerably less groceries than boxed TV dinners, fake juice, and no real meat would. Again, the only people who have the absolute freedom to eat healthy, organic food are those who have $1000 a month to spend on a 2 person household.

As I’m sure the creators meant it to be, the Constitution is largely what each citizen makes of it. In and of itself, it is almost perfect. Looking over the articles and the amendments, I don’t believe there are too many changes that need to be made to the Constitution. However, what I do believe is that the creators took the cowardly way out when they avoided the issue of slavery. That is not to say they were cowards. They defied a king and birthed a nation, they obviously weren’t afraid. I do believe that in skirting slavery, it was the first real time they had to encounter what it means trying to satisfy every American, and they deliberately left out a group because they knew someone would deal with it later. This has become the problem with our country and our Constitution. Because it is so perfect, our government knows that eventually, whoever the wronged party is, they could elect someone else to fix their problem.