KEVIN
I still remember some of my first impressions when Crystal passed along Father Joe’s invitation to write a column for a new magazine he was seeking to publish in India. While I have a great deal of respect and admiration for the intellect and spirituality of my dear bride, I have to admit feeling insecure about our ability to write something that might be relevant and relatable to an audience centered half a world away. Even in our short, two week stay in India I was able to identify some significant differences in the cultures of our two countries. I can only imagine how much I have not experienced and the differences that I can’t fully comprehend. All of those doubts came rushing back to me as I contemplated what we might offer on the subject of minority rights, a subject which has once again catapulted itself into forefront of cultural consciousness in the United Sates. As our politics have become ever more divisive and our appetite for identifying and sometimes self-identifying new minorities seeming to be insatiable, it is difficult to create a context to discuss minority rights these days. Life wasn’t always quite so complicated.
The American Experience
Perhaps the simplest and clearest way to express the context for a discussion on minority rights in the U.S. can be found in the Declaration of Independence authored in 1776 by a group of American revolutionaries seeking to become independent of British rule. In this document the colonists declared: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” In this context human rights were clearly focused as universal, God given rights to pursue a life free…
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Crystal and Kevin Sullivan
