The literal and figurative assault on American democracy that occurred on Jan. 6, when a mob sought to reverse by force the result of the 2020 presidential election, calls to mind President-elect Joe Biden’s characterization of that election as a “battle for the soul of America.” Put another way, the 2020 race was a battle between promise and prejudice, both of which were evident during the campaign.
America’s promise is stated in the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Those ideas — human rights, civil equality and government by consent of the governed — were radical in 1776, when autocrats ruled the world, supposedly by divine right.
Because of the ideas expressed in the Declaration and later, the Constitution, America became a beacon of hope for immigrants, including my grandparents, who fled the poverty and the semi-feudal social structure of southern Italy.
They soon realized that education was the ticket to opportunity in America, so they encouraged their children to pursue higher education. In the early 1930s, my mother boarded a train in New York City with a bulky steamer trunk, bound for a college and a community she had never seen. Later, she earned a master’s degree from Columbia University.
My Uncle Tony returned from combat service in the Pacific during World War II to earn a degree in mechanical engineering on his way to a long career at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. My father, Tony’s older brother, who also graduated from college, spent four decades as an auditor in the Treasury Department.
My relatives experienced the promise of America — a comfortable living standard, satisfying work and pride in their achievements — as many other Italian Americans have and do.
But Italian Americans, after all, are white. The promise of America is not worth much unless it gives the children of African Americans, Native Americans and other people of color the same chance it gave my parents and my uncle.
Happily, signs abound that Biden sees his election as a triumph for America’s promise. His appointments thus far highlight the American rainbow. An African American woman will represent us at the United Nations, a Native American woman will head an Interior Department that Native people have long distrusted, and a Latino former classroom teacher promises to be a breath of fresh air at the Department of Education.
If blessed by promise, though, America is still burdened by prejudice. In 2016, too many Americans surrendered to their prejudices — against people of color, immigrants, Islam — anything other than a familiar white Christianity. That surrender produced the death of an innocent young woman in Charlottesville, Va., the separation of frightened immigrant children from their frantic parents at our southern border, and a signal to white supremacists to “stand down and stand by.”
Prejudice is fundamentally irrational, and the 2016 presidential election produced plenty of irrationality. The nonsense has included a childish overestimation of the number of inaugural attendees, head-in-the-sand denials of climate change and the gravity of the coronavirus, a presidential recommendation to ward off the virus by injecting disinfectant, and unfounded claims of election fraud in both 2016 and 2020. On Jan. 6, the president’s repeated claims of 2020 election fraud turned the nonsense to anarchy and a despicable attempt to supplant the rule of law with the rule of force.
I am glad that my parents and grandparents have not been alive during the past four years, and especially glad that they did not witness the events of Jan. 6. Having endured the sacrifices of World War II to save democracy, they had no tolerance for petty, narcissistic autocrats and they surely would have cursed the prospect or the presence of a homegrown one.
Still, if they were alive today, I would remind them to keep the faith because on Election Day and again on Jan. 6, America recovered and refreshed the soul it nearly lost four years ago. Our promise overcame our prejudices, preserving our democracy, a result that all Americans whose forebears came here for a better life can and should embrace.
Brian Porto, of Windsor, is a professor at Vermont Law School.