Question

what groups have had to struggle to be recognized and have demanded that they too are entitled to the same rights, privileges, and benefits that accompany being an american?

Answer 1

On the Freedom in the World index, the United States is listed in the highest category for human freedom in civil and political rights, with 86 out of 100 points. The Federal Government of the United States has, through a ratified constitution, guaranteed unalienable rights to citizens of the country, and to some degree, non-citizens. These rights evolved over time through constitutional amendments, supported by legislation and judicial precedent. Along with the rights themselves, the periphery of the population granted these rights has expanded over time. Today, the United States has a vibrant civil society and strong constitutional protections for many civil and political rights.

But this was not always the case. Earlier, the same rights, privileges, and benefits were not provided to all. On a number of human rights issues, the United States has been internationally criticized for its human rights record, including the least protections for workers of most Western countries, the imprisonment of debtors, and the criminalization of homelessness and poverty, the invasion of the privacy of its citizens through surveillance programs, police brutality, police impunity, the incarceration of citizens for profit, the mistreatment of prisoners and juveniles in the prison system, having the longest prison sentences of any country, is the last Western country with a death penalty, abuses of illegal immigrants, including children, facilitating state terrorism and the continued support for foreign dictators who commit abuses.

After the Revolutionary War, the former thirteen colonies went through a pro-government phase of more than a decade, with much debate about the form of government they would have. The United States Constitution, adopted in 1787 through ratification at a national convention and conventions in the colonies, created a republic that guaranteed several rights and civil liberties. However, it did not extend voting rights in the United States beyond white male property owners (about 6% of the population).

Some of this conceptualization may have arisen from the significant Quaker segment of the population in the colonies, especially in the Delaware Valley, and their religious views that all human beings, regardless of sex, age, race, or other characteristics, had the same Inner light. Quaker and Quaker-derived views would have informed the drafting and ratification of the Constitution, including through the direct influence of some of the Framers of the Constitution.

Prior to the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, slavery was legal in some states of the United States until 1865.The Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits the states and the federal government from denying any citizen the right to vote because of that citizen's sex.Intersex people in the United States have significant gaps in protections for physical integrity and bodily autonomy, particularly in protection from non-consensual cosmetic medical interventions and violence, and protection from discrimination.