When Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence that, “all men are created equal,” he presented a vision of America as a multi-cultural, multi-racial democracy. How else do we understand the word “all”? How else do we understand the word “equal”? (And we assume he was using “men” to refer generically to all people, as was the custom back then.) As a nation we have always taken this statement as an affirmation of our basic identity, even if somewhat aspirational.
Unfortunately, we have struggled to understand exactly what he meant, and what we are able to accept, by “all men are created equal.” Did the signers of the Declaration of Independence really intend to refer to all people? Or just all adult, white males, like all of them? The 14th, 15th, and 19th Amendments to the Constitution came closer to upholding and affirming the vision that all people are created equal. But our actual practice, including significant decisions by the Supreme Court over the years, often went the other way and implicitly upheld the priority and privilege of white men. Jefferson’s words were reduced to window dressing, a lie we told ourselves and others to make us feel good, evolved, and morally superior.
Here we see the two Americas. The debate over these conflicting and mutually exclusive visions has been intensifying. Are we living into that vision of inclusion and equality, as the most multi-racial and multi-cultural nation in history, “the last, best hope of earth,” as Lincoln said? Or will we remain mired in ignoring, excusing, defending, or enforcing a caste system with white men at the top?
Is the former even possible in real life? Or is it simply human nature that societies must have one central group exercise priority, set the agenda, tell the story, determine the images, hold the power, and control the institutions? Do we have to privilege the canons and values of “Western Civilization”? Is that the center that has to hold? Or can we be one nation and have multiple stories, or does one nation mean one story? Is there a story wide and inclusive enough to embrace everyone and exclude nobody? Or will our differences dominate and separate us? Will we collapse in chaos and disorder if white men are not in charge?
The crisis of this moment, the crisis behind all our other crises, is shifting demographics. Sometime soon, white people will constitute less than 50% of Americans. We will become a nation without a racial majority. This is existentially threatening to some white people, which is why they are frantically resorting to lies and violence in defense of their status. They want to maintain white supremacy in America by any means necessary, because any other America will not be America as they remember it, and therefore not the real America at all. To them, any other America does not appear to be worth living in. Better to burn the whole house down than let other people sit at the table as equals.
For such people, I fear that multi-culturalism works only so long as the basic framework of the caste system remains in place and whites retain priority. Others would be welcome, but only as long as they learn and defer to the history, values, language, and religion of Europeans. This cultural heritage is thought to be the gravitational center of America which holds everything together; without which America-as-we-know-it ceases to exist.
But a nation cannot have minority rule and at the same time accurately call itself a democracy. Minority rule denies that “all people are created equal.” Thus, the “America” that white supremacists want to maintain cannot be a democracy. This is why they undermine and cripple democracy whenever they can. Two current strategies are voter suppression (based on a lie about rampant “voter fraud,” and racial gerrymandering.) They may dress all this up and call it a “republic,” but that is disingenuous. Minority rule, no matter what it is labelled, is not sustainable without an ever-increasing application of propaganda, exclusion, and repression.
Diversity is a fact in this country. It has been since Europeans and Africans first arrived in the early 17th century. Now we will have to figure out how to live together as a country that has no racial majority. America, if it is to survive, requires a story that includes and embraces our glorious diversity. That is, in fact, the only possible America. Let’s be clear: we will either be a multi-cultural, multi-racial, multi-faith democracy, or America will implode into continuous, debilitating conflict.
In short, we have no choice but to lose the settler-colonialist story, where everything depends on and revolves around Europeans. Rejecting that narrative and the behaviors it inspires will mean acknowledging that America was stolen from indigenous peoples and built by the labor of African slaves and poorly paid workers from Asia and Latin America. These groups have been relegated to the bottom of the American caste system, and continue to suffer prejudice, indignity, and violence. That system has to be abolished. Amends in the form of reparations are in order.
The new story will develop that original vision articulated by Jefferson, about all people being created equal. That hope and promise, of this continent as a place of spectacular beauty and natural resources, where people of different nationalities and ethnicities may dwell together and construct together a community of inclusion and thanksgiving, with respect toward each other and the Earth, is the contribution of Europeans.
The new story will recognize the fact that we are all here, and that it is time to figure out how to move forward together, as equals.
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