"Is America Possible?”
This article is part of Finding the Words, a newsletter that delivers practical insights on the day’s issues.
In my office hangs a framed quote from the writer and activist Audre Lorde: "It's not our differences that divide us. It's our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences."
I put that quote on my wall years ago and read it daily. First spoken in September 1979 while Lorde was at a conference in New York, the words remain relevant and thought-provoking for me today.
Our differences don't divide us.
Or do they?
In 2023, Judy Woodruff wrote a piece for PBS exploring the divides in America. In the article, she wrote: "For the past decade and more, it's become clear politics has been generating deeper divides—not only over issues, but over culture and character." She also noted that according to a Pew Research survey, more than two-thirds of Americans view members of the other party as immoral and dishonest.
What used to be seen as a tolerable set of policy differences has become profoundly personal.
Have our differences—real or perceived—become too wide?
This week, as America turns 250, I find myself thinking about that question once again. A milestone like this invites two very different instincts: to celebrate what's been built, or to tally what's broken.
Maybe we can also invite a third instinct: to consider what it takes to keep building better.
Just as physical bridges are built to connect two disconnected bodies, the same holds for building better bridges between people. Martha McCoy called them civic bridges, and they shouldn't be shortchanged. Civic bridges require a willingness to close divides between issues, parties, and people. They require, as peacebuilder Dr. John Paul Lederach says, "the courage to start."
Iara Peng started. She started a nonprofit called JustFund that is moving hundreds of millions of dollars in philanthropy to organizations that have been historically excluded from philanthropy.
Eboo Patel started, too. He built an organization that brings leaders and institutions together to unlock the potential of America's religious diversity.
So did Tina Rosenberg, when she and her colleagues started Solutions Journalism Network to focus their reporting on what was working in communities versus what was broken.
And Jenn Brandel started something too: a slew of nonprofits that focus on designing systems that better listen, respond, and evolve with their communities.
These people are just a few examples of courageous builders celebrating differences and bridging divides—proof that the work of a "more perfect union" was never meant to be finished in one generation. It was meant to be continued.
The late civil rights leader Vincent Harding posed and lived a question: "Is America possible?" He wondered whether America's noble experiment in creating a multiracial democracy could work. Before he died in 2014, he was asked if he still believed it was possible to create a democracy that worked for all of us. He answered, "Yes, but only as we make it possible."
Two hundred and fifty years in, that one critical question remains our collective assignment.
So as fireworks light up the sky this week and we mark 250 years of this America, I hope you'll join me in considering your own role in helping to make a more humane and just America possible.
What's one action you have the courage to start?
This week seems the perfect time to take on such a prompt, knowing that together we can make America possible, if we all choose to make it so.
This post is part of the Finding The Words column, a series published every Wednesday that delivers a dose of communication insights direct to your inbox. If you like what you read, we hope you’ll subscribe to ensure you receive this each week.
