It is neither cool nor helpful to tell people they have a problem to solve without offering a means to solve it. And since I make it my business to be both cool and helpful at every turn on my journey, I am going to help the good White folks amongst us to kick their habit of fetishizing the ‘Founding Fathers.’ A caveat: this is strictly for people of good conscience- and you know who you are. And if you happen to be a person who is unsure if you are in that number, I’ll short-cut this thing for you right now and tell you you’re not. So hop off this train now so you don’t blow a gasket later.
For those still taking the ride, know that the eternal optimist that I am (that I actively resent being) cannot help but believe that many of you want to get past the morass of systemic racism nearly as much as I do. Like me, you understand that the racism coursing through the American bloodstream is literally holding us back from being everything we could be; which happens to be everything that earlier generations of leaders put down on paper. The next time somebody makes a misty eyed reference to Martin Luther ‘The’ King’s I Have A Dream speech, do them a favor and remind them of his “Be True To What You Put On Paper” speech. It was a much better speech, and would hold a lot more sway today with Black folks and those who proudly ally with them.
To those who mean well but have fallen asleep at the wheel during political discourse, stop using the phrase “The Founding Fathers.” Just flush it down the toilet like everything else in our system that has outlived its usefulness and has become toxic biowaste in our bodies. That phrase is equivalent toxic biowaste in the body-politic because when it is used, it immediately establishes a tone that effectively cuts off meaningful dialogue because of the people it valorizes and the reason it valorizes them.
I know that fathers, as a group, will never be as popular as mothers. But still, a lot of people happen to be very fond of their father, whatever his flaws may be. However, those flaws almost certainly do not include enslaving, torturing, raping, and then selling their children to somebody else so they can recycle the torment. And the sweet cherry on top is that after all that, this father would proudly claim he did it for the children’s own good and that they were better for it. By any account, that’s a pretty bad father. And if you are an American identifying as an African-American, that means your “father” did that to you.
So it makes perfect sense why Black folks would quickly ditch that phrase, but what would be really cool would be if white folks didn’t care who the ‘Founding Fathers’ did it to, but were moved to reconsider their affection for them because they did it to anybody. Membership in the human family should have made American slavery impossible. Perhaps that’s why so many ‘Founding Fathers’ insisted that we were subhuman beasts.
Quite often we lose because of the language we use. We choose words that frame debates in ways that seal an outcome before any arguments are advanced or counter-points deployed. That is why the phrase “the Founding Fathers” is so corrosive. Reverence and affection are built into whatever debate is underway, when it has absolutely no business being there. Because the truth is it doesn’t matter what they thought or how they felt or what they wanted in their context. What matters is what they actually did and what it actually means in this context; if it means anything at all.
Only a liar or a fool would consider the views of ‘the Founding Fathers’ on the ‘Right to Bear Arms’ when they lived in a world where only an asteroid crashing into the earth could kill as many people as quickly as a gun that can be bought in a routine retail transaction today. So because we have been mind-fucked into deifying the “Founding Fathers” we now have mass shootings more frequently than tornados or hurricanes. Never underestimate the power of language.
It is fairly common to hear an intellectually engaged and socially aware person rail against ‘the Patriarchy’ in the same discussion where “The Founding Fathers” phrase makes a cameo appearance. We’ve heard it and said it for so long that many of us do not interrogate what it means to say it, and what a hostile expression of classism, racism, and sexism it is.
Everybody with any significant exposure to American History is aware of who, and what, the “Founding Fathers” were. A collection of monied white male insiders; racists, classists, sexists, hypocrites and opportunists. And in the midst of being all that, it is also fair to say that these men, collectively, performed brilliantly as political scholars and actors. They did not just steal the land of the red men who were here when their white asses arrived, they also lifted from them the political organizational ideas of the indigenous tribes in forming this government. Representative governmental structure, negotiated power sharing, etc. Like the fertile land itself, it was all here before the “Founding Fathers.” But true to form, they made it their own and took full credit.
As monolithic as they were demographically, there was legitimate diversity of worldview amongst the 56 men in the Pennsylvania State House in July of 1776. And to the chagrin of all the theocrats and Jesus-freaks out here, these men were not representing Christianity or Judeo-Christian doctrine or any of that other bullshit that the lying ass kooks and con-men ‘Conservatives’ have been lying about for so long they’ve forgotten it is a lie. There were as many atheists and humanists in that room as men professing devotion to a religion.
There were those who railed against the inherent danger of allowing the formation of political parties in this new land (shout out to John Adams especially) and those who insisted upon it (screw Thomas Jefferson and his child-sex-trafficking self). So anytime a bobbling-head pundit says what “The Founding Fathers” believed, they are shortcutting the intense and protracted debates that led up to the negotiated position. That is proof that they were no different than political actors are today.
I promised a solution at the top so I will deliver at the bottom. And it is an easy one. Just call these men what they were. They were the founders; not the fathers. They were the framers; not the fathers. ‘Founders’ is both accurate and politically benign. ‘Framers’ is both reflective of the work they did and respectful of its historical endurance. These men did found this country. They did frame the rules that provide the structure for how we move and groove to this very day, for better or worse. Just call them what they were and leave my father out of it. And unless your father kept you in lifetime bondage and promised the same for your children, you should be quite pleased to leave yours out of it too.
This post originally appeared on Medium and is edited and republished with author's permission. Read more of David Saint Vincent's work on Medium.