Color Magazine Online

"... It amounted to the most eloquent 'Dear John' letter ever written."

Equals.

=

Mimi=Freed. I used to sport the mathematical symbol in one of many stage-names during my San Francisco heydays of self-discovery and chronic reinvention. "No, it's not a typo," I'd tell editors or booking agents, "It's a symbol representing the ideal of what we all ultimately are: equals."

Like a kid, I insisted on knocking my hardheaded notions of hope against closed doors. So much so, it's left me with a permanent version of an infant's soft spot. Because I keep knocking!

I'm an American and the carrot that's been dangling in front of me since my first civics class is that by birthright, I've got a shot at the spoils of capitalism! All that's required is the willingness to meet the vast fields of opportunity with hard work and voila: victory is mine!

That's about the most level playing field there is in America. Everyone is equally responsible to pay taxes for being here. Everyone except the wealthy minority with enough money to pay a lawyer to sniff out and jump through loopholes like some kind of poodle-bloodhound hybrid.

The barons who forced the Magna Carta on King John of England could have never imagined the trickle down effect that protecting their privileges would have on the future. I doubt they envisioned a day when a female would be considered a citizen of a nation, let alone have the right to vote or own property. Especially a woman whose skin and features was so markedly alien to theirs.

Right now, I'm fantasizing about a time warp introduction to Oprah Winfrey, who by all economic rights is an American Queen. She is the most actualized example of what the white founding fathers could have never imagined they actually meant.

The Declaration of Independence states in its opening line that the people of this new country have a right to "the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them."

Separate AND equal? There's a backwards smack from history to the Confederate segregation fantasy of separate BUT equal. They demanded their inalienable righ as human beings (quaintly referred to as "men" in the document) to a liberated life of pursuing happiness. It amounted to the most eloquent "Dear John" letter ever written.

Dear Great Britain,

It's been a lot of fun seeing you for the past couple of hundred years. You've shown me so much and opened my eyes to so many of the world's wonders and truly, I'll be ever grateful to you for that. It's your lessons that have birthed in me the imagination and courage to sally forth on my own into the new adventures brimming this new world. I hope you understand, I simply can't bear to be yours any longer. I must do this for my own good. I hereby resign myself and hope you do too, to our inevitable separation. I hope one day you'll see it as I do and we can finally look to each other eye-to-eye as friends. ‘Till then I remain...

Equally yours,

America

Equality, by "which the Laws of nature and Nature's God entitle them." Nature! You can't argue with nature. You're a piece of it so you're entitled to be a free person and not someone's subject. What a glorious vision.

The trouble with vision is the further you get from what you're looking at, the harder it is to see. How else to explain the disconnect from seeing their right to freedom but not a Native American's or an African slaves? Blinders? Ambition? A game of peek-a-boo with themselves they forgot to see they lost?

Projection is a psychological term where one's own feelings are ascribed to something or someone else. It's also how the movies work, by images being lit then projected on to a screen.

How perfectly un-ironic it is then that entertainment is one of our highest grossing industries. And the highest-grossing film of all time is Avatar - a tale of equality not only among genders and races, but species. Go America! We're number one! At least in the movies, where we excel at pretending "it's all good."

The good word being about this fascinating ideal of equality, smack in the midst of a mosaic display of diversity. Of course we all get along; look at the Little League game that includes an obese boy, an East Indian boy and of course a Black kid on the team. Watch a mutual fund commercial and you'll feel like we're there - we've made it to the great ideal of equality the country was founded on - at least we're projecting that we're there.

The most esoteric interpretation I had for the = symbol was it was the final place of transformation. No matter the equation, from simple addition to complex physics, all the numbers end up in the mystical symbol where they transform from what they independently are, to a sum of something new.

The light bulb in the great American projector is a brilliant, self-evident and natural idea of equality. Every day we are collectively writing and rewriting the script for the movie we all hope will really have a happy ending: liberty and justice for all.