"White Privilege" is a Myth

West Indian Creole woman with
her servant c. 1780
Photo: Wikipedia

I was pondering the other day, how I came to be the lottery winner of “white privilege.” God made me in the image of a good Christian, compassionate and loving to my fellow human beings, and gave me certain tools for success that he gave everybody else, regardless of skin color.

I felt privileged that my parents worked hard and put a roof over our heads and food on the table. It was not the best in the world, but we survived. Nobody gave us welfare and, had we demanded something we did not earn and were not entitled to, we would have been told swiftly, “no work, no food.”

“White privilege” is a spurious construct invented by progressive academics who love to divide and categorize people into groups just so they can keep animosity and hatred between them in order to better control them.  

My parents always told me that, if I applied myself and worked very hard, I would be successful. Nobody made promises to me that life would be easy and success will just fall in my lap just because I was classified as “white” by university scholars and government bureaucrats.

The Constitution does not mention free college tuition, free health care, and other entitlements that Democrats classify as rights. I have the right to exist and the opportunity to pursue my happiness, health, and education, and nobody owes me anything based on my skin color.

If I work, I have money to eat, a roof over my head, I may have a car, and other amenities that can be bought, if I can afford them. If I want luxuries, I must work extra, get a better job, or forget about it. Happiness and satisfaction do not come from buying material things.

Now angry and violent lefties are trying to diminish my hard work by telling me that I did not “build” that, it was given to me because I have the esoteric construct called “white privilege.” As double talkers, progressives are really good at inventing euphemisms. If there is such a thing as “white privilege,” why isn’t there a “black privilege?” What about “Hispanic privilege,” “Native American privilege,” “Asian privilege?”

What exactly is “white privilege?” According to a website, “white privilege” is a “set of advantages and/or immunities that white people benefit from on a daily basis beyond those common to all others. White privilege can exist without white people’s conscious knowledge of its presence and it helps to maintain the racial hierarchy in this country.” By this definition, “white privilege” does not exist in other countries where white people live. Apparently we have “white privilege” as a “direct result of the disadvantages of other people.” According to this half-baked theory, even white people who are not overtly racist benefit from “white supremacy.” So “white privilege” is equal with “white supremacy?” https://www.mtholyoke.edu/org/wsar/intro.htm

Students cite the fact that “white privilege is not having to worry about being followed in a department store while shopping.” Perhaps if you shopped rather than shop-lifted, you would not be followed.

Violent and angry mobs riot, burn, rob people on trains, and hit people of a different skin color over the head in a sick “knockout game.” It is sheer hatred generated by their lack of a moral compass and success, taking their anger on innocents. Riots are a convenient excuse to loot stores in their own neighborhoods.

At the lowest point in our lives, white friends and I never looted or robbed stores under the pretense of “social justice.” We did not demand other people’s money, free college tuition, free health care, and other government forms of welfare. We took a second job, worked every day and part of the night because we had pride and honor, not bogus “white privilege.” I worked for minimum wage even though I had a college degree, cheap labor was not beneath me.

“White privilege” is “about thinking that your clothes, manner of speech, and behavior in general, are racially neutral, when in fact, they are white.” Behaving like a civilized person, speaking proper English, and behaving like a human instead of a savage street thug is not “white privilege,” it is proper breeding and having a mom at home in the first six years of your life, teaching you how to behave.

Black students bullying other black kids because they make good grades is wrong. They are not “acting white,” they are concerned for their future and have a plan for success. Wearing pants down your bottoms like jail inmates do is not proper dressing. Nobody wants to see your underwear in public. Using incomprehensible ghetto jargon is not a formula for success either. Communication in a common language that everyone understands is important.

“White privilege exists on an individual, cultural, and institutional level.” I cannot remember how many times I lost jobs to lesser qualified and lesser educated black applicants who were hired because of affirmative action quotas. How many better prepared Caucasian students could not attend a university of their choice because there are quotas set up for black people, Hispanic people, and people born in a “poor” state?

One Seattle liberal writer wrote in 2015 why “white privilege” exists.  http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/11/lessons-white-privilege-poc/

1.     “I Have the Privilege of (Generally) Having a Positive Relationship with the Police”

Could that be because you were taught to respect authority, especially the police, and how to behave in a polite manner outside of home? Yes, you have the privilege to behave in an orderly and respectful manner when questioned by police. How you choose to behave dictates the outcome of any encounter with the police or any other people for that matter, regardless of your race. If you are violent, recalcitrant, and armed, you will be treated with blunt force.

2.     “I Have the Privilege of Being Favored by School Authorities”

School authorities treat everyone by the same set of rules; if you choose not to follow those rule and become violent, then the treatment of you will escalate to another level; violent students at home or in the streets are violent and recalcitrant in school as well, defiant of authority, and must be treated accordingly. Schools hire security to help school personnel deal with such offenders.

3.     ”I Have the Privilege of Learning about My Race in School”

Ethnic studies are on the rise at all colleges and universities even though they do not assure a student employment upon graduation. Nobody is stopping you from learning about your specific ethnic group or race’s history and culture.

The problem for liberals is, most of the contributions to science and mathematics, even literature, have been made by the much reviled “evil white men.” That is a fact. There are some contributions made by other races but, generally, modern technology and science discoveries were made by white men.

Students are forced to learn about the Five Pillars of Islam, in an effort to convert as many students as possible to that faith. Whatever happened to the atheists suing over “separation of church and state?” Does it only apply to Christianity, not to Islam?

There is black history month; since the U.S. black population is about 12 percent, then, to be mathematically accurate, there should be about a month and a half of learning nothing else but about black history and the contributions made by black people to civilization.

4.     “I Have the Privilege of Attending Segregated Schools of Affluence”

Many white people do not have the privilege of attending the schools of their choice for many reasons – they cannot afford the expensive tuition, perhaps their grades are not good enough, or reside in areas that do not fall under that school’s jurisdiction. On the contrary, most “schools of influence” are segregated based on wealth and income and not race. Obama’s children attended a “school of influence” in D.C. even though they self-identify as black. If there is segregation, it is based on income, not skin color.

5.     “I Have the Privilege of Finding Children’s Books that Overwhelmingly Represent My Race”

Most publishers are liberal and tend to accept for publication books that represent their progressive stance. Books are written generally in a number representative of the black population in the U.S. You cannot possibly force white authors to write about something they are not familiar with since they did not grow up or experience the black culture.

6.     “I Have the Privilege of Soaking in Media Blatantly Biased Toward My Race”

It is hard to even dignify such a statement particularly today when the MSM has become the laughingstock of fake news, defending manufactured news which are heavily biased towards the Democrat Party platform, a platform that has failed black people for decades, keeping them suppressed and poor (see Detroit). Yet these people of color keep electing their corrupt Democrat Party representatives and senators to power. I don’t know many white people who take the MSM media seriously because of their “social justice” and “collectivism” ideology, both communist inventions which some of us have been victims of for decades.

If you are a criminal, the media reportage will generally cover up the criminal’s race or ethnicity, unless he/she is white.

7.     “I Have the Privilege of Escaping Violent Stereotypes Associated with My Race”

The writer makes the bogus statement that “White supremacists (who tend to be White) have perpetuated more terrorism in the United States than any foreign threat.” I suppose 9/11 and the jihadi movement never happened.

8.     “I Have the Privilege of Playing the Colorblind Card, Wiping the Slate Clean of Centuries of Racism”

He makes a good point that “race is a social construction based on physical differences.” However, he blames white people for using the invention of race. I have not met a black student yet who has not shamelessly benefited from his/her race when competing for scholarships, grants, college admission, jobs, adjustment to their entrance ACT or SAT scores, and other benefits not available to white students.

The concept of “colorblindness” is not good enough for this writer, we have to atone for our “implicit biases,” another bogus euphemism, claiming that we associate lighter skin to intelligence, that we give black children less medication for severe pain, and that we “prefer white-sounding names when it comes to school discipline, job applications, and government inquiries,” a ridiculous assertion, which is not true; and it is against the law to discriminate in such a way.

Many of us get our “white privilege” by going to work every day, sometimes to very unpleasant jobs and when sick because we cannot afford to miss the paycheck.  Others get “white privilege” by working long hours on a project, by studying hard on a test instead of partying with the boys, and because we take the hard road of personal responsibility without crying discrimination and racism. When we were told no, we never gave up and tried harder.

Because we have this imaginary “white privilege,” race baiters and their fellow travelers want reparations for slavery which, in some progressive opinions, had an important role in giving us today’s imaginary “white privilege.”

Slavery, gone but not forgotten, has been a justified stigma in the history of our country. Progressives are demanding financial reparations for slavery which is objected to by Americans whose ancestors were never involved in or benefitted from the slave trade. Progressive advocates fail to mention that there were also white slaves who built this country, they were indentured to industrial projects and railroads.

The Atlantic slave trade took place from the 15^th through the 19^th centuries with slaves from central and western parts of Africa who had been sold by other West Africans to Western European slave traders.

The Portuguese brought in 1526 the first transatlantic slaves from Africa to the Americas. They were sold to work in coffee, tobacco, cocoa, sugar, and cotton plantation, silver mines, rice fields, construction industry, logging timber for ships, skilled labor, and as domestic servants.

The British, the French, the Spanish, and the Dutch Empires followed the Portuguese’s example and shipped slaves in cargo ships to the New World and to the Caribbean area where slaves made goods to be sold in  Europe. More than 12 million slaves were bought and sold; a substantial number died during the grueling passage at sea.

By the 17^th century slavery became a caste in which children born to slave mothers were slaves themselves and thus property.  At the beginning of the 19^th century, governments moved to ban the trade but smuggling still occurred. In the 21^st century, some governments issued official apologies.

According to historians, slavery was practiced for centuries in parts of Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Americas, long before the Atlantic slave trade. African states exported slaves to other African countries. The African slave trade was a source of slaves to Europeans and many Muslim countries. From the 9^th to the 19^th centuries, slave trades from across the Sahara, through the Red Sea, from the Indian Ocean benefitted Muslim countries.

The volume in the Atlantic slave trade was larger than the African slave trade. The victims of the Atlantic slave trade came primarily from several areas: Senegal and Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, Mozambique, and Madagascar.

Slavery is wrong no matter who practiced it, how, for what reason, and during what time. But to create racial strife in 2017 by claiming a bogus “white privilege” in the United States, one of the most tolerant nations on the planet, is wrong and divisive, particularly in an environment that progressives have termed themselves as “colorblind.”

We have many black people in positions of power in the United States, in business, education, in Hollywood, in sports; the federal government is dominated by black employees, and we’ve already elected the first black president who is now very busy overseas, bashing America and the current president.

 

 

 

Common Sense Progressive and "Out of America"

"In countries where people are free, people are not 'equal.' In countries where everyone is 'equal,' people are not free."             - Rightbias.com

The young black man described himself as a “common sense progressive.” I would have never noticed his profile in the social media, had it not been for his unreasonable defense of another rich and successful black man, a football player, who chose to ignore our National Anthem under the absurd race-baiting excuse that he was taking a stance against imagined racial and police oppression in America.

To call this young man delusional and indoctrinated into progressivism by his expensive public school education in America is an understatement. Since he has never lived in any stifling communist paradise he yearns for, this young man is in no position to understand that common sense was in short supply or non-existent in communist countries. Associating “common sense” and “progressivism” is oxymoronic or delusional at best.

I asked him how he arrived at such silly description of an ideology that killed my father and 100 million other people who lived and toiled under communism as subsistence drones who were truly oppressed. His inadequate explanation was that we came from “different worlds and different experiences.”

It was counterproductive to explain to this confused young man that United States is the best and the most tolerant place in the world to live. The identical talking points about modern oppression, which are repeated ad nauseam by famous and infamous talking heads, are manufactured by the profitable race baiting industry that conveniently ignores and turns a blind eye to the real oppression occurring around the world.

Ensnared by the racial division rhetoric constantly coming from this administration and the media, this young man believes that the Black Lives Matter movement is a lofty endeavor and not a paid organization supported by left wing groups to promote violence and social unrest. To this young man, the much maligned police and the military are the enemy and the oppressor, not the Thin Blue Line between anarchists and the rule of law.

He probably studied revisionist history in his classes and skipped the part about the Soviet Union’s KGB, German Democratic Republic’s Stasi, and Hitler’s Gestapo, examples of real oppression against religious groups, ethnic groups, and innocents who held divergent opinions.

I was confused when black people started calling themselves African-Americans. Most of them were many generations removed from their African ancestors and have never been to Africa, yet the fascination and the draw to identify with people from a continent away who happen to share their skin color is powerful. And what about white people from South Africa who immigrated here? Are they allowed to call themselves African Americans?

The rest of us call ourselves Americans and it would be nice if someday everyone would be identified or self-identify as just Americans. But the division lobby is very powerful, how else can they control the narrative and power if they don’t keep voters, citizens, and students divided along racial and ethnic lines?

I suppose we cannot understand who we are if we cannot understand how we were created and where we came from, what shaped us into who we are today. It is important to know and understand what made each of us unique.

I can attest to the feelings of confusion even when we are actually born in a far-away place and go back decades later to revisit our roots and where we grew up, only to find ourselves strangers in our own lands because, while we were pining for our lost youth and roots, the place of our birth had changed and people had moved on, we could no longer recognize what we remembered. But identifying with a place you had never set foot on, whose culture, customs, and language you did not understand, is quite puzzling.

Recently I read about the journey of a successful black man, Keith B. Richburg, who actually went to Africa to find his African roots, to see where his ancestors were sold and bought from four centuries ago.

Shelby Steele, writing in praise of Richburg’s book, Out of America, A Black Man Confronts Africa, said:

“Black America has always imagined Africa like the adopted child imagines the birthparent. The dream is that Africa holds a truth for us. Keith Richburg marches through that dream and finds that he was an American all along.”

Richburg went to Africa as a journalist in 1991-1994 and reported on “the famine and anarchy in Somalia, genocide in Rwanda, the Liberian ‘wackiest, ruthless, and uncivil war,’ and the failing state of Zaire.” (p. 134)

He wanted to identify with Africa but instead, as Newsweek wrote, he bitterly repudiated Afrocentrism.  “As a black American returning to the land of his ancestors, he filters all he sees through the prism of his racial identity. Instead of empathy he feels only a deepening sense of estrangement.”

Richburg wrote, “I was thankful to have been born in America, where even for a black man, a descendant of slaves, anything and everything was possible.”

Returning to Africa in 2006, Richburg found Somalia “as depressing as when I first visited there in 1991.” When he reported on Zimbabwe in his book, it “had growth rates, high literacy, and the ability to feed itself.” But the 2006 Zimbabwe was an abysmal place. Mugabe had destroyed the middle class, ruining the formerly prosperous African country, causing half of its 12 million citizens to be dependent on international food aid. Inflation was running at “200 million percent,” epidemics flared up, and there was no water, sanitation, health care, and schools, the basics offered by a properly functioning society.

Having watched the “… dead float down a river in Tanzania,” having come close to being killed in Somalia and ignored by American soldiers driving by who could have saved him from a dangerous situation when he waved his press credentials and passport, scared in the realization that they only saw a man who looked like a potential Somali murderer, Richburg thanks God today that he is an American. As a black man in Somalia, he “was constantly at risk.” (pp. 84-85)

Richburg watched his journalist friends die at the hands of warlords in Somalia, victims of the very population they tried to help when they brought the plight of Somalis on camera, for the world to see. Hopes were quickly dashed, he said, that “Africa might become the testing ground for the New World Order.”

South Africa’s “racial groupthink” helped him realize that everyone was defined and categorized according to the color of their skin. Although growing up as a “black kid in a white country,” he avoided being defined by the color of his skin and believed Martin Luther King’s vision of a man being defined by the content of his character. Richburg avoided the label “black reporter,” he preferred “good reporter.” Yet he found out that various African dictators suggested that, “as a black reporter, I was supposed to report more favorably on them.” (p. 195)

He wrote in foreword that, seeing “a black man, the son of a Kenyan exchange student and a white woman from Kansas, as president of the United States and the most powerful person in the world, I feel that, whatever the cynics said, the faith I put in this country has been more than vindicated.”

Out of America ends on an upbeat note. People may think of Richburg as an Africa hater, racist, or even a “self-hating man who has forgotten his African roots.” Can we forget something we never really knew in the first place? He is grateful to have been born a black man in America. … “Everything I am today – my culture and attitudes, my sensibilities, loves, and desires – derives from that one simple and irrefutable truth.” At the end of the day, we are not hyphenated, we are all Americans.  The people of Baton Rouge have shown the world a united American front of brotherhood, courage, and dignity.

 

Gunston Hall, the Significance of George Mason, and Independence Day

Gunston Hall front entrance (Photo: Ileana 2015)

“I had many occasional and strenuous coadjutors in debate, and one most steadfast, able, and zealous. . . . This was George Mason, a man of first order of wisdom among those who acted on the theatre of the revolution, of expansive mind, profound judgment, cogent in argument, learned in the lore of our former constitution, and earnest for the republican change on democratic principles.”  - Thomas Jefferson, 1821

As a naturalized American by choice, Independence Day for me is not “Happy July 4,” as young and old alike greet each other with all day, or an opportunity to grill, BBQ, be with your family and friends, hang out the flag with pride, or ignore it because it’s a misperceived symbol of racism, or burn it just because you can, or attend fireworks shows for the sake of traditional entertainment.

Independence Day has a deep significance that only people like me who fled evil communism or other dictatorships can understand and few can explain cogently. For me, it is the story of the valiant fight for freedom and independence from an oppressive and out-of-control government.

On this hot and humid 239^th Independence Day anniversary, I decided to take a trip down history lane, about four miles east off the beaten path to Gunston Hall. The road wound through lovely pastures, a hidden golf course, a state park, a couple of churches, and thick-forested areas that seemed a world away from the busy highways and interstates of northern Virginia.

On the site of the first Pohick Church (1730-1774), one of the earliest religious sites in Fairfax County, there is a lovely Methodist Church nestled among green trees and pastures, the Lewis Chapel/Cranford Memorial, built in 1857, surrounded by graves dating back to 1780. A simple engraved granite block memorializes “all soldiers who served in the Civil War, 1861-1865, and were buried here.” A few American flags are visible, vases with artificial flowers, but not one Confederate flag is displayed.

When Daniel French, the original contractor that was hired to build the new Pohick Church died during its construction in 1771, George Mason, an executor and vestryman, finished the job.

Documents reveal that in the period prior to the Revolutionary War, Anglican churches, which were supported by taxes, fulfilled the function of welfare agencies, taking care of the poor, the widowed, and of the orphans.  

A historical sign described how on June 16, 1700, unknown Indians, possibly “Wittowees or Piscataways,” attacked with “arrowes and wooden Tommahawkes” and killed eight people in Thomas Barton’s house. Historians speculated that the attack occurred because the Indians were upset by colonial encroachment on their lands and were “encouraged” by the French.

Gunston Hall, located about four miles to the east, was George Mason’s home, the Revolutionary leader and author of the Virginia Declaration of Rights and the first Constitution of Virginia. The fourth George Mason built his mansion in 1755-1758, but the land had been “acquired” in 1696 by the second George Mason. He bought the land which was patented in 1651 by Richard Turney. Turney was hanged for taking part in the Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676.

Gunston Hall front entrance (Photo: Ileana 2015)

The winding entrance to Gunston Hall is flanked by thick woods until it suddenly opens wide into grassy fields. The majestic road is lined by old magnolias. The original cherry trees from George Mason’s time had been replaced long ago with stately magnolias.

To the left of Gunston Hall, about three-fourths of a mile, the Potomac River adds a marine blue hue to the lush green landscape. A road leads to the port where boats docked and delivered visitors and cargo to the mansion. A beautiful garden path in the back of the house is lined with the original bushes, leading to a bluff overlooking a forested valley.

18th c. well used by the Mason family
(Photo: Ileana 2015)

The original 18^th century well used by George Mason’s family is still on the left hand side of the property. In a shed behind, inhabited by a black snake which startled me when I reached too deeply inside to take a photograph, there is an 18^th century millstone found near the site of Holt’s Mill (operational from 1700-1740 on Mason lands) one mile southwest of Gunston Hall on Mill Creek. Thirty other buildings and barns surrounded the mansion at the time. It was a lively village bustling with activity.

As it was the case with most wealthy land owners in the 18^th century Virginia, George Mason planned and supervised the construction of his own home, designing its exterior and layout with the help of an English-trained carpenter and joiner, William Buckland, whom he hired in 1755.

A wealthy Virginian’s mansion was literally his castle for dinners, teas, balls, barbecues, fish frys, games, hunts, and musical entertainment. Ever so hospitable, neighbors, relatives, and friends and “visitors of distinction” were frequent guests and always welcome. Entertaining all the time was a way of life.

John Mason, the eldest child, recalled that the main meal was served at 2 p.m. and nobody sat down until his father arrived. Grace was always part of the meal, “God bless us, and what we are going to receive.”

A devoted husband and father, George Mason was married to Ann Eilbeck for twenty-three years. When she died at thirty-nine, he described his beloved wife as “a prudent & a tender mother.”

As a Justice of Peace, George Mason signed marriage licenses. He mused in a letter, “This cold weather has set all the young Folks to providing Bedfellows. I have signed two or three Licenses every Day since I have been at Home. I wish I knew where to get a good one myself; for I find cold Sheets extremely disagreeable.” He remained a widower for seven years before marrying a second time to Sarah Brent of Woodstock in Stafford County. There are many Brents today in Dumfries, the oldest town in Virginia.

George Mason was only a delegate to the Virginia Assembly, a Justice of Peace for Fairfax County, a vestryman at Pohick Church, and a trustee for the towns of Alexandria and Dumfries, but he had a profound influence on our nation’s government.

George Mason had 12 children by Ann Eilbeck. The nine (five boys and four girls) who survived were educated by a private tutor in a one-room school built for them on the property. Tutors included a Mr. McPherson of Maryland and a Mr. Davidson and a Mr. Constable of Scotland. In 1832, Gen. John Mason described how the last two tutors had been specially selected by George Mason himself to come to America in order to teach his large brood while they lived in his house. The entire second floor of the mansion was dedicated to bedrooms for the children with beautiful views of the lands, including a spectacular view of the Potomac River and of the gardens.

The first floor had a large entrance atrium with a beautiful grand wooden staircase, the deep-green master bedroom to the left and a dining room in green, white, and gold, with George Mason’s portrait and the portrait of his first wife Ann as a sixteen year-old, a Chinese-motif room, painted in yellow and decorated with pagoda-like freezes and wooden moldings as envisioned at the time.  Closets, hallways, another staircase, helix-shaped and tiny, a game room, and reading room completed the floor.

View from the back porch of the Potomac River

(Photo: Ileana Johnson 2015)

Slaves lived away from the main house, as Mason wrote, “Out of sight, was a little village called Log-Town – so called because most of the houses were built of hewn pine logs. . . . lived here several Families of the slaves, serving about the Mansion house – among them were my Father’s body Servant James, a Mulattoe Man & his Family, and those of several Negroe carpenters.” Some outbuildings near the main house were places where slaves worked, ate, and sometimes slept.

Slaves quarters where work was done

(Photo: Ileana Johnson 2015)

Slaves grew tobacco and wheat for export, some were blacksmiths, carpenters, coopers, shoemakers, spinners, weavers, others were domestics in the Mason household, cooking, raising children or were personal butlers. In 1783, according to archives, “more than half of Virginia’s population was black.” It is fair to say that “slavery was the dominant form of labor in Virginia” of the 18^th century.

According to the archives, even though George Mason described slavery as a “slow poison,” he did not free his 90 slaves.  When he died in 1792, he willed his slaves to his nine children. Some Chesapeake slave owners did emancipate their slaves. Few runaways made it to freedom; George Mason issued a reward of ten pounds for the return of his slaves, offering detailed descriptions of the men and the possessions they carried with them.

Grist mill stone (18th century)

(Photo: Ileana Johnson 2015)

The last private owners of Gunston Hall, Louis and Eleanor Hertle, donated the mansion in 1949 to the Commonwealth of Virginia, administered by a Board of Regents from the National Society of The Colonial Dames of America in Mrs. Hertle’s memory. Louis Hertle, retired from her job at Marshall Field’s in Chicago, hired architect Glenn Brown to restore the mansion beginning in 1912.

According to the museum archives, aside from the few volumes with George Mason’s signature, acquired from his uncle and guardian, John Mercer, a lawyer with a vast collection of 1,700 books, little is known about Mason’s library. He was quite wealthy and we know that he gave each of his children a substantial gift of money and property.

A 1775 ledger with Jenifer and Hooe, a merchant firm of Alexandria, revealed that George Mason was growing a lot of wheat on his property after 1770. Prior, tobacco was the primary crop. In a September 1788 letter, George Mason wrote: “A violent Storm of Wind and Rain . . . with almost Continual Rain for many Days afterwards, has done great damage to the Tobacco . . . our wheat has also suffered some Damage, & our Hay a great deal . . .” Tobacco was grown in 1775 on his Hallowing, Occoquan, and Dogue plantations.

Virginia planters, including Mason, grew tobacco, wheat, and corn for sale, barley, cotton, corn, and flax for private use. An orchard provided fruits and nuts and a 1780 letter to Thomas Jefferson shows that “Mason took great interest in his fruit stock.” Every plantation had an extensive garden to feed everyone. Tallow, leather, and wool came from animals they raised. Fishing and hunting provided both food and recreation.

George Mason, the author of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, influenced many other authors and documents:

-          Thomas Jefferson when he wrote the Declaration of Independence

-          James Madison when drafting the U.S. Bill of Rights

-          Benjamin Franklin when drafting the Pennsylvania constitution

-          John Adams when drafting the Massachusetts constitution

-          An adaptation of Mason’s first Article, “That all Men are by Nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent Rights, of which, when they enter into a State of Society, they cannot, by any Compact, deprive or divest their Posterity; namely, the Enjoyment of Life and Liberty, with the Means of acquiring and possessing Property, and pursuing and obtaining Happiness and Safety,” appears in Wisconsin, South Dakota, and Montana constitutions

-          The French Declaration of the Rights of Man

-          The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights

George Mason, Elbridge Gerry, and Edmund Randolph were the Constitution non-signers among the fifty-five delegates, each calling for a national bill of rights. Mason wrote prophetically at the conclusion of the 1787 federal convention in Philadelphia (mid-May through mid-September): “There is no Declaration of Rights, and the law of the general Government being paramount to the Laws & Constitutions of the several States, the Declaration of Rights in separate States are no Security. Nor are the people secured even in the Enjoyment of the Benefits of the common Laws.”

As one of the primary architects of the Constitution, having delivered more than 125 speeches during the convention, but “fearing that the proposed government would diminish the power vested in the citizenry,” George Mason refused to sign. His prophetic decision was made in the Philadelphia State House, known as Independence Hall, where the Federal Convention met.

Thanks to George Mason’s 1776 Virginia Declaration of Rights, the English Bill of Rights of 1689, and the Magna Carta (1215), we now have The U.S. Bill of Rights which includes freedoms not enumerated in the Constitution such as freedom of religion, of speech, freedom of the press, of assembly, the right to keep and bear arms, freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, security in personal effects, freedom from warrants issued without probable cause, and reserves all powers not specifically granted to the federal government to the people or the States. The question remains, are we going to be able to keep them?