this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2026
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I can't speak for the rest of the world, but US history is lousy with instances of people failing to recognize other people as qualifying for human rights (or being necessarily human). White men have repeatedly argued regarding women and black men that they aren't fully human, actually.
To be fair, we were creeping up on it slowly even as Jefferson penned the American Declaration of Independence, in which the all men are created equal notion was derived from a universalism that was consistent in the enlightenment-era philosophy of self-governance. But many of our Constitutional framers were slave owners themselves, and beholden to the ownership class at the time, who owned slaves and wanted very much to keep using them. There were abolitionists among them. Some like Jefferson were conflicted between their values and their comforts.
This is why the postbellum Lincoln era abolition movement was so important, as it was another step towards universalizing civil rights in the US. It wasn't enough to free the slaves and assure former slaves couldn't be discriminated against, and were allowed to vote. Congress eventually resolved that every man had to be guaranteed civil rights, and that they cannot be discriminated against for any reason.
And we had to take another step to give women suffrage in the 20th century. We still failed to ratify the ERA, though, and we may suffer for it if the Roberts Supreme Court decides to nullify the 19th amendment the way it has nullified the VRA.
As such, the US may be doomed to collapse, first into totalitarianism and then into food and resource crises (as our ownership class are incapable of governing or preserving the social contract). But in the next iteration, if the world doesn't burn so far as to become uninhabitable, maybe it should be a crime to discriminate against minorities and marginalized groups, or to attempt to legislate to make it legal to do so.
I'm not a legal expert, nor an expert on government, so I don't know if there is even a solution that protects societies from the consolidation of power to where it can be abused.