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By\u00a0Deepti Hajela The Associated Press\n <\/p>\n
NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 The aspirations cut a wide swath through American history since 1776 \u2014 from the \u201cAll men are created equal\u201d of the Declaration of Independence and the \u201cWe the people\u201d of the Constitution, to the \u201cindivisible, with liberty and justice for all\u201d of the Pledge of Allegiance.<\/p>\n
One can find it in the country\u2019s name \u2014 the UNITED States of America \u2014 and in the sentiment of the motto written in Latin on its coins and one-dollar bills: E Pluribus Unum, or \u201cout of many, one.\u201d<\/p>\n
The effort has been optimistic and unrealistic, successful and a failure, enduring as an American ideal during moments when citizens struggled \u2014 and struggle today \u2014 to practice it.<\/p>\n
How has the notion of unity in American society evolved in 250 years and more? What does it mean \u2014 and what doesn\u2019t it mean, particularly in fraught and troubled moments? \u201cIt\u2019s a question,\u201d says one scholar, \u201cthat every society has to answer.\u201d<\/p>\n
I. The beginnings of these \u2018United\u2019 States<\/p>\n
From the milestone moment of the nation\u2019s beginning, the founders emphasized that unity would be a vital component of the new country, where government would be based not on a king and monarchy as in Europe but instead, as the Declaration says, \u201con the consent of the governed.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is of infinite moment that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national union to your collective and individual happiness; that you should cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment to it \u2026 indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest,\u201d George Washington said as he stepped down from two terms as the first American president.<\/p>\n
At the start of the experiment, the fabric of a nation first stitched together from 13 original colonies, defining what unity meant was far from settled.<\/p>\n
Even as the founders spoke of high-minded ideals, they put limits on who they allowed to take part, who had rights and freedom and who didn\u2019t. All these years later, determining the meaning of unity can still be a challenge. Do we interpret that Latin motto to mean a blending of different perspectives to create a country that is greater than the sum of its parts, or does it mean there can only be one, that unity requires sameness?<\/p>\n
Either way, here\u2019s the thing about aspirations, as anyone who\u2019s ever quit on a New Year\u2019s resolution can tell you: They don\u2019t turn into reality without effort and commitment, or come out of just a sole moment, no matter how singular.<\/p>\n
Our individual lives are built not just from the milestones but from the everydays in between. How could the life of a nation be any different?<\/p>\n
II. Aspiration vs. reality<\/p>\n
Even as unity has stood among the ideals, the on-the-ground experience of life in America for the last 2 1\/2 centuries has reflected the reality that in this created nation, there\u2019s never been just ONE America, where everyone lived in the same way or had the same access to power and prosperity.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t there at the country\u2019s inception. And in the moment the U.S. is living now, it certainly isn\u2019t either.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the United State has had a more volatile history in terms of how it deals with questions of inclusion and exclusion, how it draws the line and polices the line of who\u2019s in and who\u2019s out,\u201d says Daniel Immerwahr, a professor of history at Northwestern University.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a question that every society has to answer \u2026 who\u2019s on the inside, who\u2019s on the outside,\u201d he says. \u201cI would say that what\u2019s interesting about the United States in this regard is how changeable and nonobvious some of the answers to those questions are.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sometimes the differences have been straightforward \u2014 like geography (rural vs. urban, plains vs. mountains) and climate (heat vs. snow, wildfires vs. flooding). Sometimes they were, and remain, cultural \u2014 people from different countries of origin, newcomers vs. generations deep, speaking different languages, following different denominations of Christianity or other religions entirely. And of course, the differences have been economic; rich and poor have always lived differently.<\/p>\n
But sometimes, the differences have been travesties \u2014 like enslaved Africans and their American-born descendants, forced to live under the lash as they worked in the fields and elsewhere for the benefit of white owners. Even after slavery was outlawed, they were subject to discrimination and worse under racism that was legalized in systemic ways into the 20th century and that echoes still.<\/p>\n
The Indigenous tribes whose populations were decimated by death and disease as the American experiment moved westward and newly arrived settlers hankered after their tribal lands, and whose cultures were stripped from generations as the U.S. government tried to force \u201cunity\u201d through brutal efforts at assimilation.<\/p>\n
Communities of people barred from possibility because of gender, sexual orientation or other characteristics.<\/p>\n
There have also been persistent efforts across eras to create a country where the opportunities available to some \u2014 say, voting, economic growth, or access to education \u2014 would be made available to all. That came gradually through protest movements, legal action, and callbacks to those same American founding ideals and aspirations of unity and equality.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt provided a language for the groups that were challenging these exclusions to draw on \u2026 invoking the ideals of the Revolution and the Declaration and saying, \u2018Look, this is what the nation is supposed to be about,\u2019\u201d says Eileen Cheng, a professor of history at Sarah Lawrence College. \u201cThey could challenge the system and yet claim that they were being the true Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n
III. What could \u2018unity\u2019 even look like?<\/p>\n
One of the things about ideals, though, is that they can be somewhat abstract.<\/p>\n
What does it mean for a country to be \u2018united\u2019? Does unity mean uniform? Is it, to borrow a reference from one of satirist Terry Pratchett\u2019s books, that people are on the same side, or can they be on \u201cdifferent sides that happen to be side by side.\u201d Is unity overall even a good thing in the context of a raucous democracy?<\/p>\n
A look around the globe and through the history books shows there\u2019s no single answer. There have been countries with a single official language, others that have recognized multiple languages, and some, like the United States, that for generations have never officially designated any. At times, countries have chosen official religions. Nations have different standards and processes for naturalizing new citizens.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are always tensions between the unity and the separateness,\u201d said Paul Wachtel, a psychology professor at the City College of New York. \u201cThere\u2019s no society that is just one or just the other \u2026 what\u2019s really most essential is that we learn how to negotiate those tensions.\u201d<\/p>\n
The United States experienced that firsthand in its infancy. The Constitution we live under is the second attempt at a framework for government. The first, the Articles of Confederation, kept the federal government weaker and the individual states stronger. It quickly became clear that having such a weak central government \u2014 i.e., less unity \u2014 wasn\u2019t effective for the new country, leading to the Constitution.<\/p>\n
For some countries, like many in Europe, those negotiations have taken place under the weight of centuries of history and geography, and other established backdrops like the existing form of government, which impacted the direction they decided to go. The U.S., from the founders\u2019 perspective, was a new entity.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat it is to be of the United States is to adhere to a set of principles rather than to have a certain kind of lineage,\u201d Immerwahr says. \u201cSometimes that makes the United States remarkably open, and then sometimes that gets the leaders of the United States in all kinds of weird contradictions as they try to explain why they\u2019re doing some forms of inclusion and not others.\u201d<\/p>\n
The United States has a decidedly mixed history when it comes to dealing with those tensions. Things have fluctuated.<\/p>\n
Take migration, for example. There have been eras when the influx of people coming to these shores was seemingly a never-ending stream, but also times when much of the world was barred. In politics, the idea that there would be different factions represented by different parties was loathed by some, even as it became embedded in the political culture. Groups that were once looked down on are later brought into the fold, and vice versa.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat have we learned over the last 250 years is that things change,\u201d says Cindy Kam, professor of political science at Vanderbilt University. \u201cWe are inclined to be social animals, but what those groups are is culturally constructed. So political elites, social elites, cultural elites, they do that work in identifying what the groups are, who is part of \u2018us\u2019 and who is a part of the \u2018other.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
By no means is it settled; if anything, the demographic, technological, economic and other changes of the last several decades are making discussions about unity more relevant than ever. In recent years, Americans have lived in a country where polarization is rampant, and serious \u2014 sometimes dire \u2014 questions abound over what the future holds. That\u2019s probably more in line with the country\u2019s beginnings than people realize.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis polarization, people talk about it like it\u2019s a new thing. But I think it\u2019s really a return back to the way that we were at the beginning of the country,\u201d Cheng says. \u201cIt\u2019s not like this kind of linear development where we\u2019re growing more and more accepting of difference. I think it\u2019s up and down.\u201d<\/p>\n