CONOR
CRUISE O'BRIEN
American Identities
Identities, yes. But singularity, as well. Foreign governments having
dealings with America in the post-Cold-War period - as in earlier peri–
ods - are conscious mainly of having to face a single entity. Not a
monolithic entity, indeed, but not, either, some kind of loose coalition
of diverse identities. Rather, a complex, highly-structured polity: a
Union, the United States of America. This is a trite enough train of
thought, I confess, but one shou ld not get altogether out of earshot of
it. There is always some danger of losing sight of the obvious in dealing
with a vast and complex subject matter.
"Out of many, one."
E pll/ribl/s,
IlrIltrII.
Not a very fashionable idea,
but I think one with more life in it than might be supposed. The current
emphasis, among those who engage in the discussion of such matters, is
on diversity , the multicultural agenda, on race and gender differences, on
efforts
to
downgrade both the English language and standard English in
particular. The salience of identities, plural, seems at times so strong that
one might think there cou ld be no possibility, any more, of an American
identity, a common sense of being American. If this is so, what will be–
come of the Union, that is, of the United States?
Some activists, speaking on behalf of minority groups, have shown a
tendency to disparage the whole idea of the Union as irrelevant to their
concerns. This is not at all surprising, in view of the record of the federal
government and federal institutions regarding what was happening to
blacks in the South from the 1870s to the 1950s. But to dismiss the
Union itself, on account of that period of occultation, is historically
unsound. It was the Union that abolished slavery. It is within the frame–
work of the Union that all later racial progress has been achieved. It is
within that framework that what needs to be won can be won. The
breakup of the Union into separate states and groups of states would
have brought about a certain multiplication of identities indeed, but one
which would have been fatal to the hopes of racial minorites and many
others as well. So people should think twice before they disparage the
Union.
I think the present forms of emphasis on diversity are actually both a
Editor's Note: This essay was first presented at the New York Forum, April 8,
1994.
