The promise of America

(News4usonline) – America is still trying to be a more perfect union. It has a long ways to go before it can ever get to that point. In the meantime, the America we know today is a country still trying to find its voice. 

The country is still figuring out who we are as a nation. The nation today is not the America that our parents knew when they were growing up. It’s not the country that our grandparents and forefathers had to come to grips with as they toiled to make a better way for us.

Well, who are we? We’re a country of immigrants. Land of the free. Yet America remains a nation still ripped apart by racial and social injustice. America wears and has worn many hats in one form or another. 

For 250 years, the molding of this great country has been shaped by events that we could control and by occurrences that were completely out of our hands. 

We’re the same country that profited mightily off of the backs of Black people by accepting and riding the coattails of slavery. We’re also the same nation that kicked that horrible inhumane practice to the curb. 

Thanks to the Civil War and President Abraham Lincoln signing the Emancipation Proclamation to free the slaves, those bounded by the shackles of indentured servitude no longer had that burden put on their backs.  

However, freedom came at a cost. For several hundred years, Black Americans paid the toll. Lynchings, scare tactics by armed night riders, Jim Crow laws and defacto dehumanization were the benefits of being free. 

Somehow, someway, America has been able to move past that dark stain.

Or has it? The duality of America’s consciousness has been expressed since the nation’s birth in 1776. The same country that once told Black Americans that we were only part human (Dred Scott) can also brag about bringing about equality for all through desegregation laws and civil rights advocacy. 

Today, Black people can vote. It was not supposed to be that way. We were once servants. We had no rights. There was no right to vote. Learning to read was out of the question. You did so at your own risk. 

Socially, if you were Black, you could get strung up to hang or burned at the stake for the smallest of offenses. Like whistling or grinning at a white woman. Mixing (interracial dating) just was not happening. This was simply taboo. 

Today, interracial marriages and relationships have diluted themselves into the fabric of America. It’s all over the place. As society has evolved, America itself has made tremendous strides as a young country.

Think about where we are and where we were as a nation without the contributions of women. Up until the 19th Amendment was ratified, women had no more more right to vote than a pair of horse pliers. 

Once that matter came into fruition, the nation has become better for it. 

Women run corporations. They are civic leaders. They’re educators, ministers of the gospel, U.S. servicemembers, and yes, lawmakers. They are U.S. Supreme Court justices. Women have shown that they can hold down and raise a family and run a company successfully at the same time.  

This is an example of the growth of America. But whenever the country seems to take a step forward, there’s always individuals lurking around to take the nation backward. Political gerrymanderying and using the law through state interpretation to suppress voting rights is not a new phenomenon. 

Akin to a dictatorship or authoritarianism, these are tools for those in authority use to remain in power. We’re seeing this more and more at local and state levels around the country. 

So much so that this dangerous avenue of ultimate control could be leading this country into a dark, dark hole in which we may not be able to come out of.  

One person, one group of people controlling everything? This is not America. America is a living and breathing democracy. Whether some folks like it or not, America thrives on its multi-layered voices. 

This nation is powerful not because we just listen to a singular voice in a vacuum, but because we are one and because we are many. Collectively, as a people, we make America what it is. We have a lot of differences. Yet we are all the same.   

We laugh. We cry. We share stories. We love. Family is the tie that binds us all. The thing about family is that sometimes we don’t like each other. Sometimes we get on each other’s nerves. But at the end of the day, we come back together because we are family. 

That’s the promise of America.