The United States should take heed. Tribalism is on the march, with its offspring divisiveness. Officially recognized racial or ethnic categories are multiplying. The Biden administration is flirting with a form that includes more than 36 categories with write-in options for more. They range from German and Irish to Samoan and Marshallese with dozens of other categories in between.
More and more, the United States is degenerating into an amalgamation of racial or ethnic divisions that view others with enmity or suspicion. Conflict or strife grows in lockstep with a racial or ethnic spoils system. The individual is subordinated to the group. The liberty to march to your own drummer without ostracism or molestation is in peril.
From its founding, the United States has been an idea — not a racial, ethnic or other group based on ascriptive characteristics. Any person who honors the Constitution, exhibits industry, celebrates the thinker over the armored knight, and displays unsparing benevolence is a true American. No commas. No semicolons. No hyphens. No question marks.
We have often fallen short of that aspiration. But the idea that every person’s station in life should be determined exclusively by character and accomplishments was our North Star for perfect justice. It is what caused men and women, the young and the old, the rich and the poor, from all walks of life around the world to decamp to the United States as the last best hope on earth. They overcame acute hardships and danger.
Human capital is national destiny. The United States grew from a tiny parochial acorn into a mighty international oak with the greatest human capital in world history. We attracted the ambitious, the industrious, the disciplined, the risk-takers, the inventors, the innovators, the thinkers and the entrepreneurs.
The Declaration of Independence speaks universal truths that define America and transcend tribalism: “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness — that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
The signature motto of the United States is E Pluribus Unum — out of many, one. The United States Constitution protects individuals, not groups. Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan’s electrifying dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) explained: “In the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. … Our constitution is colorblind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful.”
The Statue of Liberty inspires and transfixes with Emma Lazarus’ poetry: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Thus, Justice Antonin Scalia in Adarand Constructors Inc. v. Pena (1995) taught, “In the eyes of government, we are just one race here. It is American.” The Supreme Court held racial designations on ballots unconstitutional in Anderson v. Martin (1964) because highlighting a candidate’s race encouraged racial bloc voting in lieu of candidate qualifications. Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.’s immortal “I have a dream” address yearned for the day when “my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
It is commonly said that government, institutions or organizations should “look like America.” But the idea of America has no race, gender, ethnicity, color, wardrobe or hairdo. If judging based solely on character and accomplishments leads to proportional racial, gender or ethnic diversity, there is no cause for concern. The stars are aligned. But if the idea of America and diversity are in conflict, the latter should give way to the former. “Justice,” as James Madison elaborated in Federalist 51, “is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit.”
Tribalism is the antonym of justice. It is our Achilles heel, and it should be renounced.
Bruce Fein (X: @brucefeinesq; www.lawofficesofbrucefein.com) was associate deputy attorney general under President Ronald Reagan and is author of “Constitutional Peril: The Life and Death Struggle for Our Constitution and Democracy.”
