On the record
Judged by his rights on paper his citizenship is indisputable, but judged by his rights in fact it is full of mutilations and amputations which disfigure it almost beyond recognition.
Said by
Archibald Henry Grimké
Source
gutenberg.orgArchibald Henry Grimké: “Judged by his rights on paper his citizenship is indisputable, but judged by his rights in fact it is full of…”
Editor's note · Context
Grimké discusses the contrast between the theoretical rights of African Americans and their actual experiences of oppression.
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Pray, sir, is it a careful desire to fulfill the Scriptures, or to make money, that induces you to hold your fellow-men in bondage?
It is true many a cheek burns with shame in view of our national inconsistency, and many a heart bleeds for the miserable African.
He saw that they were not essentially unlike other races--that there was nothing morally or intellectually peculiar about them, and that the evil or the good which they manifested was the common property of mankind in similar circumstances.
The difference between this motto of the Liberator and that of the Free Press: Our country, our whole country, and nothing but our country--measures the greatness of the revolution which had taken place in the young editor.