we know that the founding fathers in no way included black people in their definition of america, think about it, does it really make sense to give the name american to someone that the people who made america would not give the name to. no it doesn’t. now allot of you have allot of respect for the word ‘america’, naturally I’ll assume that you have allot of respect for the people who started it, this is the subconcious part. i don’t know you personally so forgive me if I’ve misjudged you, i’m actually not trying to judge anyone here or over this, I’m only trying to objectively make you look at what’s going on here. the same people that came up with ‘america’ came up with ‘(edited by symonsez)’ as a term for use here in america. but you wouldn’t say that he should be called nigger right, of course I know you wouldn’t. this is what I’m getting at, you can’t on one hand reject racism, hatred, racial slurs, and enslavement, and on the other hand celebrate people who you sound like you admire, and lookup too, like you look up to the word ‘america’. it doesn’t make sense.

so my point is do you really think that fredrick douglas deserves to be called american? some of you earlier said that you think it’s divisive to call him african american but I don’t think it’s divisive at all. I think it’s divisive that the founders of this country called him ‘not human’ that’s divisive but calling him african is not. do you notice that their is this weird collective thinking going on in our country over black people being called african american, collectively we just want black people to call themselves american only , so bad, but do you notice that there is not the same stigma or stress over our collective thinking over asians, jews, latinos, indians, or anybody else, for some reason it’s just the black people that we wish so bad would just be called american and we push that concept all over the place

my personal opinion is that black people don’t deserve to be called american, what america did to them on top of the law and under the law is a disgrace. honestly if anyone committed those attrocities to you or your family the last thing you would want someone to do is reward your suffering by calling you the name of those that did such horrific things to you. the next time you celebrate a day that honors some one who did the worst things you can do to a human being think about this post, I mean really think about it, and ask yourself why do you celebrate that kind of person on one hand and then celebrate fredrick douglass on the other hand.

to me most of what I’ve read above is not about equality, there are people expressing the greatness of america under the guise of equality, and it sounds more like america would like to co-op fredrick douglasses greatness and the greatness of him overcoming his experiences, but to be honest america does not deserve that greatness, america was the villian in this story and you want our hero to take the villians name for himself, just like all the slave masters gave their names to their slaves……..I honestly think that is the last thing that african americans should do.

I grew up among whispers about the abolitionists & underground railroad. JB Grinnell, founder of the town and college of the same name, was quite involved. Our town, only a few miles from Grinnell, was on “the route”, and a house right across the street from ours was used to shelter folks regularly on their way north. I found a couple of photos of the house recently – really only background to snapshots of me at about age 10. I used to play in the basement with my friend who lived there – thinking about it now, I wish I could go back and talk to the old folks in the neighborhood about its history.