For as long as the idea of a right has existed in legal form, individuals have laid claim to those rights as individual human beings. The majority of people living under the United States flag or countries with similar ethics believe themselves to be supremely important and protected as individuals with a full set of rights. Racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination may limit the rights of many individuals under unfortunate circumstances such as sexist employment situations or hegemonic societies. However, the majority of United States citizens would agree that they have claim to their own individual basic rights. The Constitutional Bill of Rights is understood to guarantee certain inalienable rights to each citizen such as the right to freedom of speech and the right to habeas corpus. Ideas of rights have proliferated throughout the world and have culminated into one multinational declaration, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights put forth by the United Nations. In the document, certain basic ideas are highlighted as inalienable human rights in attempt to protect humanity as a whole by framing those rights as universally protected. Most of “Free World”, or the westernized liberal societies, would claim to uphold the UN’s idea of Human Rights although enforcement cannot be guaranteed. Many of the articles in the declaration begin with the word “Everyone”, indicating an emphasis on every human being as an individual. As a member of the group considered, Humanity, we can claim our rights as individuals as enumerated by the declaration.

All in all, rights as an institution upholding and protecting individuals around the world seems to be an accepted basis for liberal legal/political/social order similar to the United States societal structure. However, the idea of the supreme individual eventually becomes problematic in the discourse of rights. Other entities presently set claim to rights such as groups, especially Native American tribes or religious groups within the United States. By rethinking the subject of rights, due to the problematic nature of the supreme individual, which will be discussed shortly, one can “re-work” rights to include and represent groups/communities as well as to be more fundamentally accommodating to as many walks of life as possible to counter the patriarchal, culturally biased system of the United States.

The problem with basing rights on the individual as the most important unit of society is that the individual is not completely free from the cultural, social pressures of society. The ego does not develop out of oblivion into a full person without various ideas, traditions, relationships and legal direction (in the case of a person living within a legal system such as the United States) acting upon them. Trinh T. Minh-ha labels such an ego, the product of the various societal pressures, the big, uppercase “I”. On the other hand, the true self that represents what is validly original is symbolized on paper by her implication of the lowercase “i”. Minh-ha’s use of the lowercase “i” as the personal pronoun “I” speaks to a deeper philosophical understanding of the human ego. By using the “i”, Minh-ha emphasizes her own true feelings and opinions on the matters at hand. Yet another pronoun devised by Minha-ha, the I/I is a combination that illustrates that there are many categories and groupings that make everyone interconnected. For instance, we are all human and connected in that sense, but we are not all white, males.

Often, the “I” is characteristic of the dominant culture or, according to Iris Marion Young, the universalized “particular perspective[deletion] of the dominant group[deletion]” (97). In the United States, a patriarchal, white male-dominant society is the historical foundation of our system. Therefore, the qualities and traditions that are erroneously most valued are the white male standards due to the universalizing of such a particular across the country. Therefore, any culturally different minorities (even though minorities soon pose to outnumber whites) or women in the US, find themselves fighting an intrinsically racist, sexist system simply by virtue of the system’s origin. The “Founding Father’s” were white, landholding men and came from a patriarchal system in Europe at the time. They ultimately wrote our Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, which declared “all Men are created equal”.

Only hundreds of years later did an amendment follow legally securing women’s suffrage. The amendment functions as a foundation for all other legal battles for women’s equality, an equality that is still far from being fully achieved and is therefore, still, an uphill battle.

The US’s melting pot, popular media-influenced atmosphere also tends to swallow up minority cultures. Those minorities, for instance the Chinese, feel that they must preserve their culture through tourism by capitalizing on cultural events such as the Chinese New Year (102). The “obsessive fear: that of losing connection” drives more minorities than the Chinese to commodify their culture. This is a fear of losing connection to the “i”, the genuine layer of [yourself] to which [you] may always cling” drives ethnic minority communities to commodify their culture (Minh-ha 94). These minority groups could be less threatened if their culture was more securely protected as equally as an individual’s rights are protected.

Our liberal legal/political/social order seems to assume that only one type of ego exists for each individual, which transcribes into law through rights. Thus far, we see that the reworking of the subject of rights should legally and philosophically shift to represent and protect the lowercase “i” to propagate a more accepting, less exclusive society. Such a society would allow the existence of difference and not require everyone to conform and threaten the central part of him or her. For instance, a Chinese American would not be forced to commodify his or her culture in order to preserve his/her “i”. However, the United States population as a whole is very complex and multilayered show by large diversity of cultures going into the “mixing pot.” To assume that only the “i” exists is equally as much folly as to assume that only the “I” exists. Therefore, when considering the individual as a subject of rights and legal protections and assurances, we should use the i/I model, which represents the interconnectedness of everyone through different groupings that may or may not apply. Eventually, everyone is connected in some fashion, whether by virtue of being human, or by being gay, heterosexual, male, female, African American, or Chinese American, etc. Such labels are the different facets that connect the each individual to larger groups and essentially to everyone else. The subject of rights should include these differences when inspiring rights into law.

The interconnectedness of everyone through groups culminates in communities. By investigating communities and group rights, the stress on the individualistic nature of rights becomes less clearly ideal. A constructive example is the Mashpee trial in 1977 and 1978. Here the people of the town of Mashpee, of whom were of Native American descent, sued for rights to lost land claiming they were a tribe. Native American tribes already have law protecting their sovereignty and their land. However, the discrimination against Native Americans in the United States emerged with the first contact of white settlers with Native Americans persisting until the present. Many tribal cultures within the United States are very communally based providing much structure and hierarchy within the tribe. Individuality is not held at the utmost importance creating cultures that is very different from rest of the country.

In the Santa Clara Pueblo et al. V. Martinez et al Supreme Court case, the strong communal connection was made evident, although the content of the case itself was quite controversial. Julia Martinez fought for her children to have membership in the tribe contrary to tribal law that no children born of a non-Santa Claran father could be members. Martinez saw the law as sexist and unjust taking the case as far as the US Supreme Court, but lost. Although, Martinez was correct in arguing that the law was sexist, the court ruled that the government had no jurisdiction over the Santa Claran tribal council and the tribe’s sovereignty. Tribe had a history of losing land and culture to outside pressure and sought to protect and keep land within the tribe by passing the ordinance under scrutiny. In terms of the court’s decision, the history of mistreatment, injustice, and suffering for Native Americans may have prompted the policy of not overstepping the tribe sovereignty. Overall, the Santa Claran case proved that US government grants tribes the right to govern themselves and showing that the group had some rights.

In the Mashpee case, however, group rights suffered a set back. The people of Mashpee could not prove that they fit the courts definition of a tribe. They had to qualify for tribal recognition a tribe has to show that they are a “body of Indians of the same or similar race, united in a community under one leadership or government, and inhabiting a particular, though sometimes ill-defined, territory” (Campsi 32). On many counts the Mashpee people were proven to not fit the definition, however, the definition itself is biased towards a “particular”, more specifically a white, dominant society. The fact that the people had to prove that they were a tribe to protect their communal land shows that culturally they were not protected. In many ways, tight nit, minority communities are like Native American tribes when they value the community and traditions to the point of wanting to preserve them within a certain geographical area such as a China Town. By letting the housing project keep the lands originally used by the community of Mashpee, the courts discriminatorily valued individual landowners over the group.

To keep disrespect of groups from happening, laws need to value communal use and community tradition over the individual in the case of communities like Mashpee. The subject of rights needs to be the i/I, which admits that the supreme individual does not exist. All people are part of some community on some level, whether or not they are racially connected or culturally. Society may even be better off when communities are valued and protected across the US. Vernon Van Dyke points out that “[e]thnic communities in many countries are differently treated with respect to rights of property and residence; it is not only a question of territorial reservations for the indigenous but also a question of special measures designed to make it possible for the communities to preserve their distinct identity” (38). Freedom and liberty are not threatened by extending rights to ethic or even religious groups, who wish to preserve their identity. The diversity that such laws would protect could only serve to enrich the country and deepen the strength of “freedom.”
Therefore, any policy that aims to over generalize or universalize any particular is an ignorant, fearful policy. Admitting diversity could only invigorate the country as a whole bringing all walks of life to equal standing. We should observe the trial rulings and laws being passed and act upon them, either helping those that emphasize the i/I or fighting those that aim to take away freedom from others. The “subject of rights” should be us as the interconnected, community-based individuals that we are, as well as those communities to which we belong. Overall, the subject of rights should not be exclusive, but inclusive.

Works Cited:

“The Mashpee Indians: Tribe on Trial.” Readings on the American Indian Law. Ed. Jo Carrillo. P38
Minh-ha, Trinh T. Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism. Indiana University Press, 1989 p79-114
The Rights of Minority Cultures. Ed. Will Kymlicka, Oxford University Press, 1995 p38
Young, Iris M. Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton University Press, 1990