Why We're Here

Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three-fifths of all other persons.
--United States Constitution, Article I, Section 2

The overall theme of The Other Two-Fifths is that each of us is a complete person and deserves recognition as such. This has always been true. But compromises since before America's founding have set in place a system that deludes us into questioning the premise. An early compromise was codified at the national level in Article I, Section 2 of the U. S. Constitution. (You may have another starting point that works better for you.)

Periodically, we go through the motions of justifying our full personhood as if a previous generation had never brought up the matter, had not survived slavery and Jim Crow, had not fought and died in wars expecting full citizenship on their return, had not marched, had not done whatever they had to do to allow us the luxury of seeking a better way. It's that time again.

Over the past year or so, the extraordinary delusion that is American race relations has returned in an unusual form. This time, we have a veritable Janus of a delusion running rampant. We have people who simply cannot bring themselves to accept that an African-American, Barack Obama, is President of these United States. We have people who believe that Obama's election is the end of the beginning, and that a post-racial era is not only possible but likely.

This blog is probably not the place to reconcile the above two views-- or any variations that arise. But we are in a transition of some kind, and I hope to explore that. TOTF will be a "safe space" for Black and other "minority" views in the sense inspired by Prometheus 6. (Don't lie on, about, or to us, thanks very much! There are places for that.)

P6 gets kudos and hat tips for supporting my apprentice posting and commenting, which will continue over there. Any good habits reproduced here are his doing (such as: snarky titles; hyperlinked phrases with each word going to a different site; references to mythology, from Homer to Stan Lee). Any bad habits I carry over are my own. I'll be moderating for a while as I figure out permissions and such, but I anticipate quick turnaround.

Finally, anything that interests me personally but seems beyond the purview of TOTF will appear on its companion blog, The Joshua Fit.