![\"AZ](\"https:\/\/objects-us-west-1.dream.io\/racefiles\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/AZ-sb1062.jpeg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nThe following was written by Daniel HoSang and originally appeared on the website of the Mackenzie River Gathering Foundation. Please read his entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n When Governor Jan Brewer announced in late February that she had vetoed\u00a0Arizona’s odious SB 1062<\/a>, activists across the country found good reason to celebrate. The bill would have would have broadened the state\u2019s 13-year-old \u201cReligious Freedom Restoration Act,\u201d essentially giving businesses and individuals an open license to discriminate\u00a0\u2014\u00a0even on the basis of race, gender, religion, or sexual orientation\u00a0\u2014\u00a0all in the name of religious liberty. The bill was in many ways connected to a political movement ascendant since the 1970s that has sought to make homophobic discrimination a state-protected practice.<\/p>\n The quick opposition to the bill from many business and tourism interests demonstrated the lasting impact of a boycott organized by immigrant rights activists three years ago after the state passed its notorious\u00a0\u201cshow me your papers\u201d legislation<\/a>. Even in a state long hostile to civil rights legislation, collective action by many thousands of people to advance human dignity has made an important difference.<\/p>\n To many observers, the idea that anyone could assert a \u201cright to discriminate\u201d in the name of personal freedom seems almost absurd. What kind of freedom is secured by demanding the subordination of others? But it is useful to remember that the linking of freedom and subordination has long-standing roots in the political traditions of this nation, and continues to be bound up in many of our contemporary practices and laws.<\/p>\n Since the nation\u2019s founding, the ideals of freedom, individual rights, and democracy evolved in tandem with explanations for slavery and mass death. The nation\u2019s founders held that nature had not endowed all people with the same capacity for freedom; subordination for some was the condition that made freedom possible for others.<\/p>\n It was this same idea of freedom that led early white settlers in Oregon to banish or annihilate the indigenous people they encountered and to vote to exclude Black people from the state altogether. Like the nation’s founders, these settlers also believed that their freedom was dependent on the subordination of others…<\/p>\n <\/p>\nThe Geneology of the “Right to Discriminate”<\/h3>\n