Creeds

David Brooks writes, eloquently as usual, in this morning’s New York Times:

… the United States was not founded on the basis of custom, but by the assertion of a universal truth — that all men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain rights. The United States is a creedal nation, and almost every significant movement in American history has been led by people calling upon us to live up to our creed.

For a long time the most fundamental tenet of that creed was that no person should be rewarded or punished because of any inherited or ascribed status, that every person has a right to be treated without regard to race, creed, color, or national origin.

That was the creed the civil rights movement, for most of its history, asked the nation to live up to. It is no accident that Martin Luther King’s dream was of a nation where all people would be judged by the “content of their character,” not the “color of their skin.”

Now, what’s left of the civil rights movement has abandoned that creed and the dream it gave rise to. Now, all “solutions” must be “race-based,” says a spokesman for the NAACP. But, as Brooks says, we are a “creedal nation,” and successful movements succeed by “calling upon us to live up to our creed.” So, what creed has the civil rights movement substituted for the old “without regard” to race, creed, or color creed? What new fundamental principle does it now call upon us to honor?

Gee, I don’t know, either. Since the new movement seems to be creed-impaired, here are a few suggestions:

All men and women and transgendered people are created equal, but until they actually ARE equal they must be treated differently based on whatever makes them different. Or:

All men are created different. That’s what makes us the same. Or:

From each according to his whiteness, to each according to her color. And:

We are a confederation of groups, not a nation of individuals; a salad bowl, not a melting pot; our new motto: E Pluribus Pluribus.

Perhaps we can refer these suggestions, and others, to the new central committee that will be assigned the task of determining what degree of preference is owed to which races and ethnic groups. It would be altogether fitting and proper for the civil rights movement’s new creed to be written by a committee (if only the membership can be fairly and equitably determined).

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  1. Will October 23, 2006 at 1:56 am | | Reply

    I don’t get this idea that America is a “melting pot”…Everyone I know identifies themselves by their race, and bases everything from who their friends are to what college to go to on their race. When BOTH major political parties support racial quotas in college admissions & employment, there is no doubt that this idea of loyalty to a nation (i.e., the phony “United States”) is totally antiquated. It has been replaced by a racial spoils system that everyone supports at the same time they cynically mouth cliches about “supporting diversity”.

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