As we all know, Tuesday was Independence Day and classes here at Dartmouth were canceled to allow students to participate in a plethora of events to celebrate the holiday. I ended up in the midst of a crowd of more than 300,000 people along the St. Charles River in Boston to celebrate the 4th with the Boston Pops and a fireworks show.
But this 4th of July, made a much more profound impression on me than it ever had before.
I think it had something to do with the context -- after spending all my Independence days in a small, highly homogeneous town in Tennessee, Boston was quite a stark contrast. I found myself surrounded by 300,000 Americans who ran the entire spectrum of religious persuasions, occupations, and ethnic and racial backgrounds.
For 30 minutes during a fireworks display, hundreds of thousands of different types of people shared a common bond and purpose and together celebrated our country and its people.But what is so fascinating about 300,000 fools standing around watching thousands of dollars going up in smoke?
What I find fascinating is that so many Americans today do in fact take this cynical view about the celebration of our nation's Independence Day. What is even more fascinating and scary are the millions of Americans who take such a cynical view about our nation.
Now, perhaps more than ever before, the United States is experiencing an identity crisis. One need not look very far to see the signs.Today we are once again asking ourselves some very difficult questions--what does it mean to be an American, what will it mean in the future, and where is this country heading in the next century.
Many of our country's great leaders and citizens have successfully met the challenge of defining the United States and what it was to be an American. In doing so, our forefathers and people such as Lincoln and Webster built a strong foundation on which this country and its citizens were able to grow and prosper together.But the great cornerstone on which this country rests is today in serious trouble.
A recent Newsweek Poll found 63 percent of whites and 41 percent of blacks feel the American national character has changed for the worse in the last 20 years, while only 19 percent of blacks and 12 percent of whites believe it improved. Eighty-six percent of Americans polled felt there was a time in this country when people had more in common and had more shared values than do Americans today. Perhaps more ominous thanthese statistics, overone-third of Hispanics and one-fourth of whites, as well as almost half of African-Americans believe that the U.S. will not even exist as one nation 100 years from now.
One needs to only read any newspaper to see just how little confidence most Americans now have in the ability of the Federal government, or any government, to do anything positive at all.Perhaps even more frightening than all of this are the many Americans who even feel the federal government intentionally massacred people at the Waco compound and blew up the Federal building in Oklahoma.
Newsweek's Steven Wald wrote that over the centuries, America has been held together by Protestantism, the English language, the Constitution, common experiences of war, the three TV networks and Disney world.
Of all of these factors, he says only Disney World "remains a universal, unchallenged touchstone of national identity." Recently, I took an American political history class and even my optimistic professor contended perhaps the only thing holding America together now is the shared experience of watching the same shows on television.
Is America now so fractured, politicized, and heterogeneous that our shared experiences of painful subjection to the O.J. Simpson case is really all that is left of the foundation on which this country was built?
I hope not.
At Commencement, President Clinton urged the Class of '95 to try to act as a force for the betterment of society, to give back some of the blessings and opportunities that were given to them and to seek to make connections and bind this country together rather than to pursue individual, selfish, economic self-interests.
Our generation has an incredible challenge before it. My experience in Boston this 4th of July, standing with 300,000 diverse Americans to celebrate our nation and its people, at least provides an example.
The challenges our country now faces must be met by a new generation of leaders.
I hope many of us here are willing to become actively involved in the debate over our nation's future and in meeting these great challenges that lie ahead.
