When our son was in middle school, we asked who had accompanied him to the movies. He simply replied, “Joe.” “Who is Joe?” we asked. “My friend,” he replied. We asked for further detail. He said, “You know, that kid from the other day.” This unhelpful back-and-forth continued for another 10 minutes before he provided a description that our generation would have led with: “The Black kid.”
The hope that exchange generated, that a better world was coming, has been partly realized. Not long after, Barack Obama was elected. He was most commonly described as “our first Black president,” the son of a white woman from the U.S. and a Black man from Kenya.
Joe Biden’s cabinet appointments varied by gender, race, sexuality, religion and ethnicity, but were principally announced as the first “this” or “that” and as if someone were ordering a combination dinner at an Alaska Bush restaurant. Perhaps the younger generation would have described the appointees as the most qualified people for the job and let the appointments speak for themselves.
Now, Kamala Harris is described as a Black woman, the daughter of a mother from the south of India and a father from Jamaica. A woman repeatedly elected to serve more than 20 years at the local, state, and federal level, including as vice president of our country, is being ignorantly called a “DEI” candidate, as if diversity, equality and inclusion are a bad thing.
When we stop defining people by which countries their ancestors left behind, the color of their skin, their gender, their faith or their sexuality, we will recognize the significance of the Jamaican national motto, “Out of many, one people.” And if this sounds familiar, it is because the Latin translation, “E pluribus unum,” is what America is supposed to be about.
— Larry Cohn
Anchorage
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