Dialogue

Sarah and I wrote out a short script which we felt might happen the following historical persons and author meet up to discuss freedom. They have varying different views on freedom and I feel like we left off the discussion at a part in which it could have become pretty heated. They time in which they lived is very different and the "norm" point of view society had about freedom also was extremely different.    

Historical Persons/Author:

Anne Hutchinson

Thomas Jefferson

Ronald Takaki

Overall question:

Is it possible for Americans to exert their freedoms without suppressing the freedoms of minorities?

Dialogue:

Takaki: Throughout history, the white majority has oppressed minorities from personal freedoms in order to pursue their freedoms to the fullest extent they believed possible.

Anne Hutchinson: To further this point, it was not solely based on race. Many women were oppressed of these freedoms because men viewed women as inferior.

Thomas Jefferson: It was necessary at the time for the white majority to suppress the minorities and women because the country was not fully stabilized. It is not that I wanted to fully oppress the minorities and women, for example, I have stated that Native Americans and whites are both “Americans, born in the same land,” and hopefully we will achieve the ability to have good relations in the future.

Takaki: This was not your intent because in my research, I have discovered that you wanted to “encourage them to abandon hunting and turn to agriculture”, put them in financial ruin, and remove them from the borders of civilized society.

Anne Hutchinson: The white man’s stupidity in oppressing others from their freedoms can also be exemplified in my case because I was viewed as a threat to the religious hierarchy in Boston and as a threat, I was subsequently forced to leave Boston. So therefore, who has the right to determine who is eligible for the same freedoms?