Forget the Hyphens

As the horrific images from the terrorist attacks on New York City and the Pentagon continued to fill TV screens across America, I met with my students at Los Angeles City College to help sort through our overwhelming feelings of shock, sorrow and anger.

In those moments of collective grief, as we struggled with what could possibly come out of this tragedy that was positive, the answer loomed vividly before us. We had finally become Americans again.

For the past 30 years, particularly on college campuses, the American experience has been the multicultural experience, approached through the filters of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion. In a determined quest for diversity at all costs, we became at worst a nation of separate tribes, each fighting for recognition, freedom and equality.

This fight to protect each group’s cultural rights and heritage--often at the expense of other tribes--hurt national unity.

We became a nation of “us” and “them.” All too often there was no “we” in the equation.

While the objective of multiculturalism was to help students learn about and respect non-mainstream cultures, many ended up highlighting our differences--indeed trumpeting the differences. Students learned who they were, but forgot who we were.

The enduring lesson rising from the dust-shrouded rubble of the World Trade Center is that we are all Americans.

As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said 40 years ago, “We are caught up in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied to a single garment of destiny.”

It’s time to file away our fixation on hyphenates--”African-American,” “Armenian-American,” “Mexican-American”--and again emphasize our commonality.

Or as one of my female students sobbed, tears running down her face, “Today, I’m not a woman. I’m an American.”