Even at the time of the founding of the United States in 1776—that all-important era that conservatives want to be our focus when contemplating our nation’s roots—the United States was never only a white, Western European, Christian, English-speaking country full of people who all shared similar backgrounds and beliefs and didn’t much care about frivolous matters such as pluralism. Large numbers of Native Americans and people of African descent lived in all of the original states. There were smaller numbers of Spanish Americans and Asian Americans.
To be sure, many of these diverse people living within the borders of the United States were by design invisible. They were not all citizens. The first census of the United States, in 1790, counted “slaves,” “free white males” over the age of 16, “free white males” under the age of 16, “free white females,” and “all other free people,” a sort of catchall used for nonwhite people who were not enslaved. Moreover, the United States in the late eighteenth century only had a small geographic footprint, and much of the North American continent’s diversity was located outside of it. Even if African Americans, Native Americans, Latino Americans, and Asian Americans are recognized as part of the nation now, they wouldn’t necessarily have been counted as part of America then. Much of the nation’s diversity now is the result of relatively recent legislation such as the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, which President Lyndon Johnson signed into law during a ceremony at the base of the Statue of Liberty, and which Republicans have bemoaned ever since.
Yet none of these considerations diminishes the fact that many of the diverse peoples living in the United States today descended from these diverse communities in the past; or, even if they aren’t direct descendants, they see some of their own experiences reflected in those of earlier inhabitants who shared their culture. They want to learn their history in order to understand their place in the United States today. They seek their own roots in the larger story of their nation. Their experience of the United States hews much more closely to Rodriguez’s understanding of the country than to Huntington’s, so the challenge right now is to keep asserting Rodriguez’s version of history more than Huntington’s. This project faces significant headwinds, but like the wind blowing from the west, and rivers that run deep and steady, there’s also an incredible demand for it that will not cease.