NEW YORK (AP) — As the United States approaches its 250th anniversary, the national motto "E Pluribus Unum" — "out of many, one" — stands as both an enduring aspiration and a reminder of how far the promise of inclusion has fallen short for millions of Americans throughout history. The ideal of unity appears in the Declaration of Independence's "All men are created equal," the Constitution's "We the people," and the Pledge of Allegiance's "indivisible, with liberty and justice for all," yet the nation's track record reveals persistent patterns of exclusion based on race, gender, origin, and economic status.
The founders emphasized unity from the nation's beginning, establishing government based on "the consent of the governed" rather than monarchy. George Washington, stepping down after two terms, urged Americans to "cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment" to national union and to frown "indignantly upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest." Yet the fabric of the nation, first stitched together from 13 original colonies, left the meaning of unity far from settled, with the founders speaking of high-minded ideals while putting strict limits on who could participate, who had rights and freedom, and who did not.
The Pattern of Exclusion
The United States has never been just one America, where everyone lived in the same way or had the same access to power and prosperity. Some differences have been travesties: enslaved Africans and their American-born descendants were forced to live under the lash as they worked in the fields and elsewhere for the benefit of white owners. Even after slavery was outlawed, they were subject to discrimination and worse under racism that was legalized in systemic ways into the 20th century and that echoes still.
Indigenous tribes saw their populations decimated by death and disease as the American experiment moved westward and newly arrived settlers sought their tribal lands. Their cultures were stripped from generations as the U.S. government tried to force "unity" through brutal efforts at assimilation. Communities of people were barred from possibility because of gender, sexual orientation, or other characteristics.
Daniel Immerwahr, a professor of history at Northwestern University, observes that "the United States has had a more volatile history in terms of how it deals with questions of inclusion and exclusion, how it draws the line and polices the line of who's in and who's out." He adds: "I would say that what's interesting about the United States in this regard is how changeable and nonobvious some of the answers to those questions are."
The Struggle for Broader Inclusion
Differences in the United States have been geographic, including rural versus urban and plains versus mountains, and climatic, including heat versus snow and wildfires versus flooding. Differences have also been cultural, including people from different countries of origin, newcomers versus generations deep, people speaking different languages, and people following different denominations of Christianity or other religions entirely. Rich and poor have always lived differently.
Yet there have been persistent efforts across eras to create a country where opportunities available to some — such as voting, economic growth, or access to education — would be made available to all. This came gradually through protest movements, legal action, and callbacks to the same American founding ideals and aspirations of unity and equality.
Eileen Cheng, a professor of history at Sarah Lawrence College, notes that these ideals "provided a language for the groups that were challenging these exclusions to draw on … invoking the ideals of the Revolution and the Declaration and saying, 'Look, this is what the nation is supposed to be about.'" She adds: "They could challenge the system and yet claim that they were being the true Americans."
Negotiating Tensions Today
The meaning of unity remains abstract. What does it mean for a country to be united? Does unity mean uniform? Can people be on "different sides that happen to be side by side"? Is unity even a good thing in a raucous democracy? There is no single answer around the globe or in history, with countries adopting different approaches to language, religion, and citizenship.
Paul Wachtel, a psychology professor at the City College of New York, says: "There are always tensions between the unity and the separateness," and "There's no society that is just one or just the other … what's really most essential is that we learn how to negotiate those tensions."
The United States experienced that in its infancy. The Constitution is the second attempt at a framework for government; the first, the Articles of Confederation, kept the federal government weaker and the individual states stronger. It quickly became clear that having such a weak central government — less unity — was not effective for the new country, leading to the Constitution.
Immerwahr notes that "what it is to be of the United States is to adhere to a set of principles rather than to have a certain kind of lineage," adding: "Sometimes that makes the United States remarkably open, and then sometimes that gets the leaders of the United States in all kinds of weird contradictions as they try to explain why they're doing some forms of inclusion and not others."
The United States has a decidedly mixed history in dealing with those tensions, and things have fluctuated. Migration has seen eras when the influx of people coming to these shores was seemingly a never-ending stream and other times when much of the world was barred. In politics, the idea that there would be different factions represented by different parties was loathed by some even as it became embedded in political culture. Groups once looked down on are later brought into the fold, and vice versa.
Cindy Kam, professor of political science at Vanderbilt University, says: "What have we learned over the last 250 years is that things change," adding: "We are inclined to be social animals, but what those groups are is culturally constructed. So political elites, social elites, cultural elites, they do that work in identifying what the groups are, who is part of 'us' and who is a part of the 'other.'"
The question is not settled, and demographic, technological, economic, and other changes of the last several decades are making discussions about unity more relevant than ever. Americans have recently lived in a country where polarization is rampant and serious, sometimes dire, questions abound over what the future holds — and this is probably more in line with the country's beginnings than people realize.
Cheng observes: "This polarization, people talk about it like it's a new thing. But I think it's really a return back to the way that we were at the beginning of the country," adding: "It's not like this kind of linear development where we're growing more and more accepting of difference. I think it's up and down."
Why This Matters:
The gap between America's unity ideal and its history of systematic exclusion reveals ongoing challenges in building a society where rights and opportunities are genuinely universal. The patterns documented here — from the brutality of slavery and forced assimilation to discrimination based on gender and origin — show that access to political participation, economic advancement, and basic dignity has been rationed along lines of race, class, and identity. As demographic shifts continue and polarization intensifies, the question of who gets included in "we the people" remains unresolved. Understanding this history is essential for addressing present-day inequalities in voting access, economic mobility, and institutional representation. The scholars interviewed emphasize that unity is not a fixed achievement but an ongoing negotiation, one that requires active effort to expand protections and opportunities rather than restrict them. How Americans answer questions of inclusion today will determine whether the next chapter moves closer to the founding ideals or repeats the exclusions of the past.