As America approaches its 250th birthday, we find ourselves at a crossroads that would be painfully familiar to many chapters of our past. Anniversaries are meant for celebration, but they are also moments for reflection. Two and a half centuries after our founding, we must ask whether we are living up to the ideals that sparked what many have called the great American Experiment.
We are, at our core, a nation of immigrants. That truth is not political; it is historical. From the earliest arrivals who risked everything to cross oceans, to the families who still step onto our shores with little more than hope, America has been defined by those yearning to build something better. The promise was never perfection. The promise was opportunity.
Standing in New York Harbor, the Statue of Liberty has long symbolized that promise. Inscribed at its base are the words that have echoed through generations: “Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” Those words are not just poetry. They are a declaration of identity. They are who we said we would be.
Yet racial profiling stands in stark contradiction to that identity.
Recently, a friend and teammate of my son, a middle school student, was racially profiled not once, but twice. In both instances, he was singled out because he shared a similar hairstyle with another student who had committed a disciplinary infraction. That was the extent of the evidence: a hairstyle. No investigation rooted in fact. No presumption of innocence. Just an assumption.
He is a great kid. A student. An athlete. A teammate. But in those moments, none of that mattered. What mattered was that he “fit” a superficial description.
Imagine being 13 or 14 years old and learning that your individuality can be erased by a stereotype. Imagine internalizing the message that your appearance makes you suspect before you have spoken a word.
This is not how a confident nation behaves. This is how a fearful one does.
I remember another moment when fear overtook fairness. Shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 11, I boarded a flight to Chicago. The grief and shock of that time were real. The security concerns were real. But so, too, was what I witnessed in the boarding line.
A family standing in front of me, dressed in traditional Muslim attire, was pulled aside for additional searches. They had done nothing suspicious. They simply looked different in a moment when Americans were frightened. After they were removed from the line, security personnel pulled me aside as well, perhaps to create the appearance of balance.
But appearances do not erase reality.
The message was clear: suspicion first, identity second.
We can acknowledge the legitimate need for security while also recognizing when we have allowed bias to blur our judgment. The tension between safety and liberty has always tested our republic. The measure of our maturity as a nation is whether we can protect ourselves without abandoning our principles.
Racial profiling is not just unfair to the individual; it corrodes trust within communities. It teaches young people that their citizenship is conditional. It signals to families that they may be welcomed in theory but doubted in practice. And it weakens the bonds that hold a diverse society together.
As we approach 250 years, we should remember that America was never meant to be bound by bloodlines or uniform appearances. It was bound by ideals, equality under the law, individual liberty, and the belief that character matters more than ancestry.
The Founders understood that the American Experiment would require constant tending. They debated fiercely. They compromised imperfectly. They left work unfinished. But they rooted the nation in the idea that rights belong to individuals, not to favored groups.
If we allow racial profiling, in schools, in airports, in everyday life, to become normalized, we betray that foundation. We send a message that some Americans are presumed trustworthy while others must continually prove they belong.
That is not sustainable for another 250 years.
Unity does not mean uniformity. It means shared commitment. It means recognizing that our diversity is not a weakness to manage but a strength to embrace. It means teaching our children that justice is blind not because it ignores differences, but because it refuses to let those differences determine worth.
The young teammate who was wrongly singled out deserves more than an apology. He deserves a country that sees him fully, as a student, an athlete, a citizen in the making, not as a stereotype. The Muslim family in the airport deserved to be treated as travelers first, not as symbols of collective fear.
Our 250th birthday should be more than fireworks and parades. It should be a recommitment to the ideals etched into our national conscience. If we fail to come together, if we allow suspicion to replace solidarity, the great American Experiment will erode from within.
Nations do not collapse only from external threats. They falter when they forget who they are.
We were born from the belief that liberty belongs to all. If we remember that, and live it, there is no reason this experiment cannot endure another 250 years.
