A Woman on the US Currency?

Harriet Tubman.

Right; it seems that American feminists have caught the same bug as Canadian feminists, and are demanding that a woman at last appear on the currency.

At least this makes a little more sense than the Canadian case, in which there has virtually always been a woman on the currency. In the US, sisters have only been there now and then, as Colombia, Susan B. Anthony, Sacajewa, and so forth.

They have even chosen a candidate: Harriet Tubman.

Harriet Tubman

Bad idea.

It is wrong in the first place to put political figures on the bank notes. Partisan political figures are divisive; they cannot represent the nation. At least the Americans have the excuse of not having had a monarch for head of state; presidents perhaps seemed like a necessary replacement, to one of little native imagination. But to feature prime ministers, or, worse, unelected people known only for their involvement in a political cause, is in terrible taste. It is like picking a fight.

The currency should feature either symbols of the nation as a whole, of the people, or cultural figures. The nation is the people and the culture.

Suppose the Americans want a woman on their currency, because of her sex—offensive as such sexual discrimination is. Suppose they also insist on a black woman—offensive as such racial discrimination is. It is still entirely possible to choose a worthy candidate—worthier than Harriet Tubman, whose life accomplishment was freedom for 70 African American slaves. Freedom in Canada, one might awkwardly note. A worthy thing, but her image tends to perpetuate the destructive myth that the African American history, experience, and culture is distinct from and not fully a part of the American culture. There are better candidates, without the subtext that Americans ought to be ashamed to be Americans.

For, as a matter of fact, if blacks (aka African Americans, Afro-Americans, people of colo(u)r, negroes, depending on when you first got drawn into the racial hassles in the US) have never been central to American politics, they have always been central to American culture.

Ladies and gentlemen, in no particular order, of whatever epidermal hue, I give you Bessie Smith.

Bessie Smith