"We are all in this together!” This may be the most common refrain articulated during America’s collective experience with the COVID-19 pandemic. Indeed, for many Americans this is the first opportunity to share in experiencing an international crisis. For some weeks we have been struggling with how to comprehend what is going on. As we do so during these troubling times, a unique opportunity now exists in America for a particular kind of thinking. We have an opportunity to consider whether diversity -- a principle rooted in the value of recognizing and promoting social difference -- and democracy – a principle grounded in proliferating societal fairness and justice – can actually coalesce in our country.  That is because all Americans -- the young and the old, the urban and the rural-based, and people of color and those of majority status -- must all find ways to cope and to support each other and their respective concerns during this time.

Regrettably, as Americans have had to come to terms with social distancing, social isolation, and hunkering down in the midst of stay-at-home mandates, the last few weeks have given evidence that while we may all be in this together some of us are far apart in our feelings. The protests resulting from reactions to such mandates, taken together with other kinds of protest actions occurring in recent history, affirm the existence of a problem that is deeper than a mere divergence of opinion about how to respond to the pandemic. That problem concerns the inability to effectively incorporate diversity into a widely shared vision in our nation of what it means to be an American and whether fellow Americans appropriately acknowledge each other as such.

In the past few weeks, Americans have witnessed some of their fellow citizens rain upon the capitols in Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and other states in order to declare their feeling violated by the imposition of government-mandated shutdowns. Although President Donald Trump has issued specific national guidelines that support such shutdowns, he has also argued that the states are in control regarding how the response to the pandemic should be handled. Consequently, those protesting the locally-enforced lockdowns are arguing against an initiative that has been defined by President Trump (at least until May) as in the national interest. Given the strong and enduring support across the country for stay-at-home measures, Americans clearly are not at all in this together in terms of their views about how to live with and through the pandemic.

Undoubtedly, the right to protest is a hallmark of civic life in America. However, the protests unfolding in regard to the stay-at-home mandates, as well as protests occurring in recent years over other issues, invite some careful reflection on the part of all Americans about how we regard ourselves and other Americans as citizens of this country. A clear contrast exists in that the people protesting stay-at-home mandates at state capitol buildings or governors’ residences strongly affirm that such mandates deny them their rights as Americans, yet the protest actions involving advocates for the Black Lives Matter movement as well as that of the former National Football League quarterback Colin Kaepernick were taken by some, including some of those who question the limits placed on them during the pandemic, as distinctly anti-American.  What does it mean that those who currently engage in protests against government officials and their policies demand recognition as acting on their inalienable rights as Americans while those who protested against governmental responses to racial matters become framed as anti-American, thus denying them that same recognition?

Devoting serious thought to this does not dismiss that the overarching concern of our time is how America can survive and potentially thrive post a devastating pandemic. However, a crucial dimension of our effort to achieve long-term survival and to eventually thrive rests in attending to who is recognized as legitimately American and by whom. Herein lies a conundrum of incorporating diversity into democracy. If protesting governmental action is taken to be an inalienable right of every American, then this should hold for every kind of peaceful protest action taken by any American. The incorporation of diversity into democracy is challenged when certain people are discounted as rightful Americans because they protest while others are recognized as expressing their rightful status as Americans when they choose to do so.

Americans will continue to disagree when it comes to particular political and social issues.  This is not the heart of the problem concerning the relationship of diversity to democracy. What stands at heart is that those who dismiss the Americanness of people of color and their supporters when they responsibly protest is that those critics actually discount their own capacity to affirm a core virtue of what it means to be an American; the right to express oneself. Accordingly, the relevance of diversity in our democracy is denied by those who question whether those protesting racial inequality truly are American. Furthermore, their resolve in committing to such questioning over and against our national creed concerning the right to expression compels one to think about how truly American those critics of racial justice protesters happen to be.