Restoring our national motto

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E Pluribus Unim, “from many one,” is our national motto. 

What we have here in America is unique in all the world. A nation of immigrants — “huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

That we as a nation have given so much to the world, not only in such as electricity, the airplane, mass production of the automobile, but in science and a never-ending striving for a “more perfect union” It is no mistake or accident that we as a country have achieved so much and at the same time care so much about the rest of the world. 

No other nation in the history of mankind has been so committed to “The wretched refuse of your teaming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me.”

Yet something seems to have happened. Something that instead of making us “One” seems to be bring us apart. 

A reading of “The Nature of Prejudice” by Gordon Allport might bring you to the conclusion that prejudice will always exist in that we make prejudgments about people based on they way they dress, their grooming, ethnicity and of course race.  For example, because a 17-year-old has his baseball cap on backward does not make him a bad person. But to many not able to take the time to know the individual, it makes a statement.  

In my view, we are dwelling way too much on what brings us apart and far to little on what brings us together. The government parses most statistics by race: employment, education, income.  I suppose we need some measure of these issues, but it is entirely overdone. Overdone, I believe, to the detriment of those the government is trying to help. That in 1950 there were 350,000 African Americans with bachelors degrees and today there are 5 million seems to get lost in what needs to be done by all of us, not to exclude African Americans, to make a “more perfect union” 

Not a perfect union, because perfection does not exist in the real world. While our history is replete with injustice, it is also vastly abundant with efforts to make things fair and just. I strongly believe that an increased emphasis on the latter would go a long way to fulfill our national motto.

Howard Ring lives in Riverdale. Point of view is a column open to all.

Howard Ring

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