We, the people of the United States of America, object to being viewed as a group. People with various ethnic, geographical, or religious backgrounds may be referred to as distinct groups, but not we of the United States. We refer to the Irish, the Jews, the Sudanese, the Eastern Orthodox Christians, the French, etc, but in reference to ourselves, we do not typically speak of the Americans or of the North Americans.
Inherent in our language is the idea that our population has no common feature, no common identity. We are a collection of distinct groups, often struggling against each other, often working at cross purposes, routinely demonizing those outside our self-defined group as the ‘other.’ Regardless of what our Constitution claims, we are not a coherent group working “to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”
Scientific advances over the past century have undermined the claims that we are different from each other. Almost all human beings have 23 pairs of information ribbons [DNA chromosomes] in the cells that constitute a person, and nearly all of the chemical messages contained in these arbiters of life are identical from individual to individual. Race, ethnicity, class are useless concepts that should have been eliminated from our conversations at least a century ago. We all inherit abilities. None of us inherits greatness. No group is inherently good or evil. No person or family has a predetermined right to rule over or subjugate others.
Two centuries ago, we had no scientific insights into our commonality. We assumed that there was a ruling class designated by the gods, and we concluded that there were subservient groups designated by those same gods. Despite our climb out of those primordial views, we still cling to the notion that some people are more equal than others. The Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution established that we would not continue to divide the population into arbitrary groups based on skin color, accidents of birth, national origin, religious persuasions, etc. No sooner had that Amendment been passed than citizens worked to subvert its intent and maintain a hierarchical society. The fractures in our society would not be eliminated by mere laws. Laws could not correct injustice if enough people benefited from the injustice. The people of the United States demanded that there be groups that were less than, less entitled, less ‘us,’ and so the myth of the ‘other’ was embraced and entrenched.
Despite our advance to the most successful and powerful nation on the planet, we still have vast segments of the population that insist on a fractured society. The news media and those who wish to be considered information sources remind us daily of the divisive effect on our society of wars, such as the wars in the Middle East. In the current Arab-Israeli conflict, we are portrayed as combatants in a proxy war in which people of Jewish origin are facing off with people collectively referred to as Arabs or, more specifically, Palestinians. What has been lost in the exchange of recriminations is that “war is hell” and that the real victims are not the soldiers: they are the noncombatants.
In the United States, old identities and biases have resurfaced. Hate talk for the combatants in the Middle East has moved from the kitchen table to the town square. The bombs and bullets of the Hamas and Netanyahu governments have revealed longstanding divisions in our own society, divisions that undermine our stature and credibility on the world stage.
In every war, the pain inflicted by the combatants and their enablers does not simply evaporate when the last shot is fired and the last bomb is exploded. Governments created institutions, like the United Nations, so that we would not have this periodic bloodletting. Unfortunately, those institutions have failed in their missions. As long as we insist that people can be categorized by race, religion, history, sexual preferences, etc. our institutions cannot propel us out of the conflicts that mind-numbingly recur every few years. As long as we, the people of the Americas and the world, insist on viewing every issue as a competition between ‘us’ and ‘them,’ every migration as an invasion, every disagreement as grounds for conflict, we shall remain dangerously close to self-annihilation.
We can be a force for peace in the world if we can first disallow violent disputes amongst ourselves, amongst we the people. We are best described as Americans, rather than Italian-Americans, African-Americans, German-Americans, etc. At least on this continent-spanning piece of real estate, there should be no doubt that all people are created equal and are entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These were commendable objectives more than two hundred years ago, and they still are. Rather than turning away from these objectives and embracing advancements limited to groups we believe we are a part of, we would be better served if we supported democratically inclined people beyond our borders and used our power and resources to delegitimize armed conflicts.
Dr. Lechtenberg is an Easton resident who graduated from Tufts University and Tufts Medical School in Massachusetts and subsequently trained at The Mount Sinai Hospital and Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in Manhattan. He worked as a neurologist at several New York Hospitals, including Kings County and The Long Island College Hospital, while maintaining a private practice, teaching at SUNY Downstate Medical School, and publishing 15 books on a variety of medical topics. He worked in drug development in the U.S., as well as in England, Germany, and France.
