NEW YORK — The aspirations cut a wide swath through American history since 1776 — from the “All men are created equal” of the Declaration of Independence and the “We the people” of the Constitution, to the “indivisible, with liberty and justice for all” of the Pledge of Allegiance.
One can find it in the country’s name — the UNITED States of America — and in the sentiment of the motto written in Latin on its coins and one-dollar bills: E Pluribus Unum, or “out of many, one.”
The effort has been optimistic and unrealistic, successful and a failure, enduring as an American ideal during moments when citizens struggled — and struggle today — to practice it.
How has the notion of unity in American society evolved in 250 years and more? What does it mean — and what doesn't it mean, particularly in fraught and troubled moments? “It's a question,” says one scholar, “that every society has to answer.”
I. The beginnings of these ‘United’ States
From the milestone moment of the nation’s 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, “on the consent of the governed.”
“It 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 … indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest,” George Washington said as he stepped down from two terms as the first American president.
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.
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't. 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?
Either way, here’s the thing about aspirations, as anyone who’s ever quit on a New Year’s resolution can tell you: They don’t turn into reality without effort and commitment, or come out of just a sole moment, no matter how singular.
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?
II. Aspiration vs. reality
Even as unity has stood among the ideals, the on-the-ground experience of life in America for the last 2½ centuries has reflected the reality that in this created nation, there’s never been just ONE America, where everyone lived in the same way or had the same access to power and prosperity.
It wasn't there at the country's inception. And in the moment the U.S. is living now, it certainly isn't either.
“I 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’s in and who’s out,” says Daniel Immerwahr, a professor of history at Northwestern University.
“It’s a question that every society has to answer … who’s on the inside, who’s on the outside,” he says. “I would say that what’s interesting about the United States in this regard is how changeable and nonobvious some of the answers to those questions are.”
Sometimes the differences have been straightforward — like geography (rural vs. urban, plains vs. mountains) and climate (heat vs. snow, wildfires vs. flooding). Sometimes they were, and remain, cultural — 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.
But sometimes, the differences have been travesties — 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.
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 “unity” through brutal efforts at assimilation.
Communities of people barred from possibility because of gender, sexual orientation or other characteristics.
There have also been persistent efforts across eras to create a country where the opportunities available to some — say, voting, economic growth, or access to education — 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.
“It provided a language for the groups that were challenging these exclusions to draw on … invoking the ideals of the Revolution and the Declaration and saying, ‘Look, this is what the nation is supposed to be about,’” says Eileen Cheng, a professor of history at Sarah Lawrence College. “They could challenge the system and yet claim that they were being the true Americans.”
III. What could ‘unity’ even look like?
One of the things about ideals, though, is that they can be somewhat abstract.
What does it mean for a country to be ‘united'? Does unity mean uniform? Is it, to borrow a reference from one of satirist Terry Pratchett's books, that people are on the same side, or can they be on “different sides that happen to be side by side.” Is unity overall even a good thing in the context of a raucous democracy?
A look around the globe and through the history books shows there's 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.
“There are always tensions between the unity and the separateness,” said Paul Wachtel, a psychology professor at the City College of New York. “There’s no society that is just one or just the other … what’s really most essential is that we learn how to negotiate those tensions.”
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 — i.e., less unity — wasn't effective for the new country, leading to the Constitution.
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' perspective, was a new entity.
“What 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,” Immerwahr says. “Sometimes 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’re doing some forms of inclusion and not others.”
The United States has a decidedly mixed history when it comes to dealing with those tensions. Things have fluctuated.
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.
“What have we learned over the last 250 years is that things change,” says Cindy Kam, professor of political science at Vanderbilt University. “We 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 ‘us’ and who is a part of the ‘other.'”
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 — sometimes dire — questions abound over what the future holds. That's probably more in line with the country's beginnings than people realize.
“This polarization, people talk about it like it’s a new thing. But I think it’s really a return back to the way that we were at the beginning of the country,” Cheng says. “It’s not like this kind of linear development where we’re growing more and more accepting of difference. I think it’s up and down.”
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This story is part of an Associated Press package looking at the United States at age 250. For more stories, click here.
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