英国termpaper：美国独立宣言浅析

导读：本文是一篇英国课程termpaper,讲述了“美国独立宣言”被视为美国建立的基本原则，它促进了所有人的平等，自然人权，对人民的主权和人民的革命权利，但独立宣言 无视黑人，妇女和印第安人的公民权利。

1.0 Introduction简介

1776年7月4日由13位殖民代表签署并以托马斯·潘恩的自由，民主和平等思想为基础签署的“独立宣言”规定：“所有人都是平等的，创造者赋予他们一些不可剥夺的权利，包括权利生命，自由和追求幸福。“独立战争的胜利推翻了英国政府的殖民统治，建立了一个独立的共和国（Griffin，2008）。美国人民开始在美国建立自己的民主制度。大多数州都通过了州宪法。在这些州宪法中，个人权利得到明确界定，原则上人民有投票权和参选权。但是，所有居民都不享有这些民主权利。白人，黑人，印度人和妇女不享有民主和政治权利（Griffin，2008）。

200多年后，他们能否享有“独立宣言”所规定的自由，平等和民主权利是一个值得研究的问题。本文讨论了美国黑人，妇女和印第安人如何为自己的权利而斗争，以及美国社会中民主，自由和平等权利的现状。

The Declaration of Independence, signed by 13 colonial representatives on 4 July, 1776 and based on Thomas Paine's ideas of freedom, democracy and equality states: "All men are created equal, and the Creator gives them a number of inalienable rights, including the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” The victory of the war of independence overthrew the British government's colonial rule and established an independent republic (Griffin, 2008). The American people began to establish their own democratic system in the United States. Most states have passed the state constitutions. In these state constitutions, the rights of individuals are clearly defined, in principle, people have the right to vote and to stand for election. However, these democratic rights were not enjoyed by all the inhabitants, poor white, black, Indian and women do not enjoy democratic and political rights (Griffin, 2008).

More than 200 years later, whether they can enjoy the rights of freedom, equality, democracy provided in the Declaration of Independence is a problem that is worthy of study. This essay discussed how American blacks, women, and Indians fought for their rights, as well as the current state of democracy, freedom, and equal rights in American society.

2.0 Body

2.1 The course of American blacks’ pursuing equality 

In the first half of the 19th century, the development of party politics, the establishment of NSW and the demand for immigrants promoted the first expansion of US citizens' voting rights. The states have reduced and phased out electors' eligibility limits, but they still retain gender and skin color qualification limits. On the eve of the civil war, the right to vote in all white men has been achieved. However, there is no guarantee for the political rights of the blacks. The reason lies in that, first of all, white people discriminate against the blacks and think that there is a huge gap between the blacks and whites in terms of physiology, morality, reason and thinking. Then, the slave owners in the South were the important force of the American War of Independence. In order to safeguard their interests, the Declaration of Independence did not guarantee the rights of the black people.

After independence, the North of the United States called for the development of capitalism in the western region, restricting or even prohibiting the expansion of slavery; the South was trying to expand the slavery in the west and even the country. Conflict between the two sides in the 1850s in some areas has led to armed conflict. In 1856, it opened the civil war. In July 1863, Lincoln published the famous Gettysburg speech, Lincoln’s solemn wording not only expressed the highest respect for soldiers who gave their lives in the battle, but also stressed that the civil war was not only to defend national unity, and at the same time, it was also fighting for the principle of human equality. This speech represented Lincoln's ideal of pursuing equality for the people, and the end of the civil war did abolish slavery to give the Negroes freedom, but the political rights of the blacks were not guaranteed, and the blacks did not have the rights to participate in elections, association and accept education (Griffin, 2008; Hoston, 2012). In addition, apartheid was determined in the form of legal form, indicating that the discrimination in the American society against blacks was not improved because of the victory of the Civil War and from the end of the Civil War to the mid-20th century, in order to resist oppression and discrimination in American society against blacks, they held a series of civil rights movement against apartheid and discrimination. One of the most famous leaders was Martin Luther King, who published a speech “I have a dream”, expressing the ideals of blacks in pursuit of freedom, equality and democracy. And the Black Panthers were through organization, education and economy to support American blacks to fight for equal rights against racism (Griffin, 2008).

After the civil rights movements of the 1950s and the 1960s, the struggle for equal rights by the African Americans had achieved significant and legal results to a certain extent, President Johnson signed three civil rights acts in 1964, 1965 and 1968, since then, the democratic rights and social status of blacks have been greatly improved, the racial discrimination in American society has been greatly weakened compared with in the past, the concept of racial equality began to form in all walks of life (Griffin, 2008).

But there are still lots of shortcomings in the rights of democracy and freedom for American blacks. As in politics, although the number of Aframerican political participation increases, black in politics in the United States has not achieved equal status with its number and influence, they are still excluded from the government decision-making process. Although the black economic life has improved, since the 1970s and the 1980s, black unemployment rate has been 2 to 3 times of the rate of white. Since the education level of the majority of blacks is generally low, so far most of them can only engage in the most cumbersome and most neglected labor and acquire low income (Hoggard, Hill, Gray and Sellers; 2015).1/3 of the black families live in poverty line or below poverty line. In the field of science and technology, black engineers and scientists are also numbered. In short, today, racial discrimination in the United States still exists in a more subtle form, so that blacks suffer a lot, but it is difficult to speak in words (Abramson, Hashemi and Sánchez-Jankowski, 2015).

2.2 The course of American women’s quest for equality

After the founding of the United States, the civil rights that women enjoyed were also greatly limited, many states prohibited women to own property, women did not have the political right to vote. The reason for why the constitution provided like that was first mainly because of maintaining the special status of white men, followed by the impact by the traditional British culture that “men are superior to women. In order to safeguard women's rights and achieve gender equality, there have been three feminist movements since the founding of the United States. The first feminist tide in American history began on July 19, 1848, at the Seneca Falls Village, where the first feminist-themed women's congress was held in American history, and it issued the Declaration of Rights and Sentiments, which elaborated the right to equality between men and women (Hoston, 2012). By 1920, the US Congress passed the "Nineteenth Amendment" to endow women with the right to vote, marking the end of the first feminist movement in the United States (Foster, 2015). In the 1960s, when blacks launched a civil rights movement, feminism looked back and reflected on their own inequality in the social, political and economic situations. Feminists set off the second wave of feminism in American history and fought for their equal rights, including women's participation in politics, employment, promotion, education, women's health, fertility, abortion and other female interests (Foster, 2015). In the early 1990s, the third feminist movement was created under the "stimulus" of the anti-feminist movement, involving multi-ethnic, multi-religious beliefs, multiculturalism, pluralism and other issues, called for the elimination of gender bias (Foster, 2015).

After three times of feminist movements, gender discrimination in American society has been greatly improved, and blatant sex discrimination has been very little, but subtle sex discrimination is still prevalent, the proportion of women workers in the fields of high salaries, high prestige, high technology in the United States is still much lower than that of men, and the majority of women are still concentrated in the "traditional female occupations", such as secretaries, clerks and flight attendants, and in a same industry, less women are in the upper ranks (Antecol, Barcus and Cobb-Clark, 2009). Although the US Congress passed the Equal Remuneration Act for nearly 40 years, the income gap between male and female workers is still relatively large. There is still much work to be done in the pursuit of gender equality in American society (Lane, 2016).

2.3 The course of Indians’ pursuing equality

In the early days of the founding of the United States, in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of 1787, they did not recognize the Indian citizenship, and they even implemented the Indian genocide policy, but the Indians had a tenacious resistance against the US government, making the US government change its strategy. In 1830, the US government enacted the Indian Migration Act and set apart Indian reservations, the Indians were separated from the white. Chief Black Hawk led the Indian Allied forces to resist against the government, although the disparity of their strength made them finally surrender, but their resistance allowed the world to understand the Indians pursuit of equality (Carlson and Roberts, 2006). Since the end of World War II, and especially since the 1960s, with the rise of the civil rights movement in the United States, there was growing sympathy from public opinion for the American Indians, people condemned the policy and attitude of the early white European settlers and successive American governments towards the Indians. The Indians also fought for that. In this case, the United States authorities on the surface in 1953 announced and grant them all the rights that American citizens should enjoy (Carlson and Roberts, 2006). But the actual situation shows that the improvement in Indians’ situation is limited, in the Indian reservations, there are industrial development stagnation, economic backwardness, lower housing conditions than the required standard, poor health services, the lack of survival opportunities makes many Indians come to cities, but they face with poor living conditions, high rates of alcoholism, suicide rates, high unemployment, and very low economic status (Min and Savage, 2012).#p#分页标题#e#

3.0 Conclusion

The Declaration of Independence of the United States is regarded as the basic principle of the founding of the United States by its promotion of equality of all human beings, natural human rights, sovereignty over the people and the people's revolutionary rights, but the Declaration of Independence ignores the civil rights of blacks, women and Indians. The need for economic development, the progress of the society, and the struggles and movements of blacks, women, and Indians make them have acquired the rights of freedom, democracy and equality in law and in form, but to this day, they still suffer subtle sex discrimination in American society. In the current American society, the full and equal application of rights and liberties to all of American citizens continues to be a challenge.

 

References

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