The United States is an idea, not an amalgam of tribes

Biden's tribalist census plan a stab in the back to E Pluribus Unum

Whom the Gods would destroy they first make tribal.

The Biden administration is racing forward heedless of the warning.

It has proposed in the census to tribalize the nation and abandon E Pluribus Unum as its unifying idea. (E Pluribus Unum was the unofficial motto of the United States until 1956, when Congress by statute substituted “In God we Trust” unhinged by anti-Communist hysteria). In particular, the administration has proposed to add the Middle Eastern and North African population as a distinct ethnic identity. Latinos would also be made a stand- alone identity separate from Black or White.

These distinctions encourage Americans not to think of themselves as Americans who sink of swim together. They encourage Americans to think of themselves primarily as members ethnic groups with paramount claims to their loyalty. Indeed, they will be taught to perceive themselves as invisible without an ethnic identity emblem. Thus, as reported in The Washington Post (A1, January 31, 2023), Tala Faraj, an Iraqi American, feels alienated when unable to boast about her Middle Eastern heritage.

Is there any doubt that other ethnic groups will clamor for distinct census categories to satisfy their juvenile amour propre? Latinos already may further refine their ethnic origins as Puerto Rican, Cuban, or Mexican American in the census.

We know what tribalism looks like. Endless conflict, strife, and convulsions pitting tribe against tribe. Think of the genocides or crimes against humanity sparked by tribal divisions ongoing in South Sudan, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Iraq, and Myanmar. Tribal divisions have reduced Lebanon to a failed state.

The United States was born of more enlightened stuff. The American Declaration of Independence proclaims that all men are created equal (irrespective of ethnicity or tribe) and endowed by their creator with unalienable rights. President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address amplified that this nation “was conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” President George Washington, writing to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, Rhode Island, addressed his audience not as Jews but as Americans: “For happily the Government of the United States gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.”

The idea that there is but one race in the United States-American-found electrifying expression in Justice John Marshall Harlan’s unforgettable dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896): “But in view of the constitution, 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 color-blind, 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.”

We are a nation of immigrants unified by the meritocratic principle that our station in life should be determined only by character and accomplishments. Everything else is irrelevant. Thus, Emma Lazarus’ poem on the Statue of Liberty welcomes all without regard to tribal or ethnic identity: “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-tost to me. I lift me lamp above the golden door!”

Congress should abolish racial, ethnic, or tribal categories in the census if we wish to endure as the last best hope of earth.

Two thousand years ago, the proudest boast was civis romanus sum ["I am a Roman citizen"]. We should be aspiring to make the proudest boast today, “I am an American.”