Relaciones internacionales.indb - HOMINES

THE DISUNITING OF AMERICA: A SECOND LOOK
To put the point in another way: what does it mean to be an American
An American is, technically, one who is born in the United States or
who, if born elsewhere, has sworn to support and defend the Constitution
and laws of the United States. American citizenship, in other words, does
not rest, at least in theory, on common ethnic origins. It rests on common
legal standards and common political ideals, experiences and aspirations.
It is, in theory at least, open on equal terms, regardless of ethnicity, race,
religion or gender, to all who subscribe to the political creed as embodied
in the Constitution and the laws.
Now our practice of course has, to our everlasting shame, fallen far
below our theory. The full rights of citizenship at first were restricted to
adult white males. Black Americans were slaves until 1865; women could
not vote until 1920. New waves of immigration brought in peoples who
fitted awkwardly into a society that was inescapably English in language,
ideas, institutions and traditions. The famous melting pot did not easily
melt immigrants from Ireland, from Germany, from Scandinavia; even
less easily those from southern and eastern Europe. As for non-white peoples—those
already in America whom the European newcomers overran
and massacred; or those others hauled in against their will from Africa and
Asia—deeply bred racism put them all, red Americans, black Americans,
yellow Americans, brown Americans well outside the pale.
We must face the shameful fact: historically the U.S.A. has been a racist
nation. White Americans started out as a people so arrogant in convictions
of racial superiority that we felt licensed to kill red people, to enslave
black people and to import brown and yellow people for peon labor. We
white Americans have been racist in our laws, in our institutions, in our
customs, in our conditioned reflexes, in our souls. The curse of racism has
been the great failure of the American experiment, the glaring contradiction
of American ideals and the still crippling disease of American life.
Yet, while our practice has long betrayed our theory, our theory in the
still longer run has modified our practice—and it is this, I believe, that has
enabled us to continue as a nation. A basic theme of American history
has been the movement, uneven but persevering, from exclusion to inclusion.
This movement has been fueled by the egalitarian political principles
enshrined in our fundamental political charters—principles that constantly
goad white Americans to live up to the ideals they proclaim. It has been
fueled by a Constitution and a Bill of Rights that give people who are
wronged the means of claiming their rights. And it has been fueled by the
organizations, demands, courage and sacrifice of excluded peoples determined
to secure the rights due them as citizens of the United States.
Adherence to a central core of shared political values is the essence
of what it means to be an American. Plainly there is no incompatibility
between fidelity to the unifying civic principles that hold us together
as citizens and fidelity, in so far as any individual may wish it, to any
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Vol. XX, Núm. x - xxxxx de 2005 • HOMINES •