Uncontemplated?
Unforeseen. Unintended. Undreamed.
What does it mean to live in a nation that, since its very creation, didn’t contemplate you as a separate yet wholly equal human being?
Just over a decade ago, two men wandered into my life. Two men whose existence had been fully contemplated in the Constitution. Two men who could not be more different in temperament and two men whose Constitutional privilege led them to wildly different perspectives about America.
Senator George McGovern had a deep belief that American exceptionalism is defined by our ongoing march to higher ground. Meanwhile, Ron DeSantis held (then and now) an unwavering belief that the Constitution, as originally written, is tantamount to a covenant with God binding all generations of Americans.
Uncontemplated is a reflection of what those relationships taught me about the Constitution, Democracy, and Exceptionalism.
Today, about seventy percent of the people living in America would have been originally left uncontemplated by the architects of the great American experiment. We were simply not, then or now, considered essential to America.
Contemplate That
Contemplation is not to simply mull something over although it’s often used that way today. The Latin - Contemplari - is to observe, notice, or regard. To great Latin thinkers, who had significant influence over the philosophies of our Framers, to contemplate is to give serious, thoughtful consideration. Similarly, ancient Greek philosophers, who also profoundly informed the thinking of our Framers, would have defined it as thinking deeply about a matter.
But our Framers didn’t contemplate all people.
They contemplated white men and the rest of us continue to live with the real impact of life in America without Constitutional recognition and the protections that recognition offers.
I write Uncontemplated for the American woman who aspires to control her own destiny. I write it for black, indigenous, and people of color who, despite it all, still believe in the American Dream. I write it for Americans whose diagnosis leaves America less equitable for them. It’s for people whose preferences, identities, and lifestyles make daily life downright dangerous. And I write it for the people who are clawing their way through horrific conditions for just the tiniest shot at becoming American.
I write it because our work is undone.
“I long to hear that you have declared an independency. And, by the way, in the new code of laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make, I desire you would remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands. Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.” Abigail Adams