Is there such a thing as a shared American identity?
As the USA’s 250th birthday approaches, America’s thinkers, doers, and influencers are weighing in on what this moment means, where we’ve been, and where we go from here. Among the many perspectives is an emerging divide between those who believe America has a future, and those who believe we don’t. The fundamental question isn’t about policy or politics—it’s about identity. Is there such a thing as an American identity? More starkly: Is there even an American “we” that is available to citizens of all backgrounds?
It’s not a new question. It emerged in 1776 during debates among men who, because of their liberal education, knew the question’s ancient roots. They were British subjects who were considering turning against the crown, and they were trying to decide if their own sense of shared identity and purpose could hold.
We are preparing for the semiquincentennial only because they rallied behind Thomas Jefferson’s resounding “yes” in the Declaration, inaugurating a nation that would one day become the world’s first hyperpower.
Yet there have always been those who, confronted with questions of shared American identity and purpose, answer “no,” even if rarely in such a direct way. And nowhere are the opposing perspectives clearer than in education, where the “no” perspective has reigned for decades.
There isn’t space here to recount how and why we allowed those who reject the idea of a united America to run our public education system. But the consequences of our neglect have now become obvious. Less than a third of high school graduates can meet historical standards in math and reading. And as for civic education, the Fordham Institute counts the cost:
By almost any measure, the quality of civic education in America has become a national crisis. The Nation’s Report Card . . . last showed that only 18 percent of eighth graders were “proficient” or better in U.S. history, 23 percent in civics and government. . . A recent study by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation found that only 36 percent of Americans could pass the citizenship test that is part of the immigration process, a test that immigrants pass at a 97.5 percent rate.
Calling this embarrassing doesn’t quite cut it. When your system’s crowning achievement is a generation of white kids who, in the name of racial justice, burn black neighborhoods and tear down statues of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglas, it’s time to rethink your approach to civic education.
So, let’s do it. And let’s be honest in our expectations: historical accuracy, academic rigor, and, yes, patriotism in our history classrooms. Educators who believe in both educating students and keeping these states united have many excellent organizations with which to partner, including the Bill of Rights Institute, the Jack Miller Center, the Center for Civic Education, the National Constitution Center, the Ashbrook Center, the American Heritage Education Foundation, and the American Principles Project—just to name a few. Each has its own emphasis and competency, but all hold that we should know our founding documents and the stories, good and bad, that made us who we are as Americans.
Those who believe that the only thing students should know about America is that the Founders were slave owners and that our true story can be reduced to our worst moments were thrilled when the New York Times Magazine published the “1619 Project” in 2020. Though riddled with inaccuracies and denounced by historians left and right, the series was converted into a study guide by the Pulitzer Center and pushed at breakneck speed into our public schools. The “mostly peaceful” riots that followed were a logical extension of the project authors’ vandalism of our history, leading the project’s lead author, Nicole Hannah-Jones, to happily accept credit for the “1619 Riots.”
Widespread condemnation of the 1619 Project eventually eroded its support, but the purveyors of national division aren’t without options. The Southern Poverty Law Center’s Learning for Justice (LFJ) project picks up where the 1619 Project left off. Launched in 1990 as Teaching Tolerance, SPLC rebranded their signature education program in the wake of the riots. LFJ doesn’t report reach and impact numbers, but it does report the scope of its work to turn “millions” of students into activists:
“Our free educational resources—articles, guides, lessons, films, webinars, frameworks and more—help foster shared learning and reflection for educators, young people, caregivers and all community members. Our engagement opportunities—conferences, workshops, and school and community partnerships—provide space where people can harness collective power and take action.”
The website offers media, magazine articles, and other educational “antiracist frameworks” and materials—mostly a grab bag of leftist clichés and calls to action for “justice.” Though most of its initiatives are presented in more dulcet tones, one isn’t surprised by its stated commitment to “dismantle white supremacy,” “strengthen intersectional movements,” “advance human rights,” and build a “multiracial, inclusive democracy.”
Poke around the LFJ site some more, and you’ll find both the expected SPLC left wing nuttery (my favorite, an article recasting the collapse of K-12 student test scores as a “labelling” problem rather than an indictment of “justice”-based education) and some worthy efforts, such as a well-produced video series on slavery in North America before the African slave trade. Granted, the series viewer will not hear that Indians enslaved each other long before European trappers and explorers arrived. They won’t hear how or why slavery ended throughout the British empire or that some of the last holdout slaveowners in America were Indians who held African slaves and weren’t keen on abandoning their own traditional practice of slavery because the white man passed a law. But there is no version—and should be no version—of the American story that skips over the evil of slavery as it was practiced here.
Returning to our opening question about American identity, it’s interesting to note that identity is a conspicuous theme throughout the LFJ initiative. It is clearly defined as “The set of visible and invisible characteristics we use to categorize and define ourselves and those around us (e.g., gender, race, age, religion, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, language, marital/family status, ability, sexual orientation, etc.).”
In other words, like Nick Fuentes and other identarians, LFJ believes that our identity begins in our traits, in what differentiates us, not what we share, except with members of subgroups. Nowhere will one find a thoughtful or positive treatment of human, or for that matter, American, identity.
To be fair, finding community and shared purpose with those with whom we share traits, geography, or interests is deeply human. The problem is the intentional rejection of shared identity and purpose beyond the categories LFJ finds acceptable, or, let’s be honest, useful. Their frequent appeals to human rights ring hollow without considering the humanity we share from which these rights emerge.
Americans rightly treat July 4, 1776, as our birthday because the Declaration of Independence defined us as a nation based not on a shared history or ethnicity, but on a fundamental view of the human person as possessing equal dignity, and self-evidently so:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, 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.
Like every other nation in history, we have fallen short of the ideals we strive to uphold. Our most stirring refrain about God-given equality and rights was written by a slaveholder. Yet, those who claim that such failures prohibit any sense of shared American purpose and love of country owe us an explanation for why millions of all racial groups risk life and limb to move here. What do successful and patriotic immigrants from Nigeria, Japan, Guatemala, and Romania love about America that our friends at Learning for Justice don’t know?
A love of nation is neither a moral defect nor an endorsement of its every sin; it’s a mark of sanity and resolve to do better. Any educational “framework” that reduces America’s story to one of racial injustice must delete entire swathes of our history and present: our deadliest war, an astounding amount of collaboration between neighbors of different races and ethnicities, the strange affluence of many who were supposed to be oppressed by the “system,” and the equally strange poverty of millions who were (we are told) guaranteed success by that same system.
America’s K-12 education system would do well to rebuild, beginning with a vision for civics education that strives to tell the whole national story, the good and bad. The goal shouldn’t be to produce activists, but persons of thought and character. Today, many are finding success in this endeavor by returning to the classical, liberal education that formed our founders and most of our greatest leaders. But whatever model of education we pursue, let’s embrace the Declaration’s vision of shared human identity—possessors of equal and unalienable rights endowed by God. From this core identity, let us advance an American identity in solidarity and common purpose with one another.