Solutions exist for a lack of unity

President Trump echoed his predecessors recently in incorporating into his State of the Union address a call for unity and cooperation, but we can all agree this lofty goal will not be accomplished easily – or anytime soon.

Prejudice and discrimination still pervade far too many homes and governmental offices, diverse perspectives are conspicuously absent within our deliberative bodies, and sacrifice for the good of others is an afterthought in our era of high-dollar campaigns financed by powerful interest groups.

We are in dire need of viable solutions. Some believe it will take a monumental event or catastrophe to bring us all together. Trump may believe that the military celebration he is planning for later this year will help us move the needle somewhat, and he could be right. Some have already cast aside Trump’s plans as self-interested and emblematic of a nationalist ideology that will provoke our enemies, when it may turn out to be a unifying moment. This is yet to be determined, but we cannot ultimately rely on either a national catastrophe or a parade. We must dig deeper. Solutions do exist.

Since prejudice is learned, education is a powerful weapon against discrimination. Our schools could add more curricula designed to provide younger students with a global perspective, units on the Civil Rights Movement could further explore the progress that is left to be made through modern, case-based studies, and both of these topics could also address the devastating effects of discrimination and oppression in other areas of the world. Our teachers have difficult jobs, and competing priorities make developing new curricula a complex endeavor, but our schools remain a crucial forum for countering the evils of learned prejudice.

In a political system controlled by two major parties, it is the responsibility of each to cultivate new leadership among its ranks. Our country’s power brokers are also leaders of their respective parties, so if unity is indeed their aim, they should be working to ensure that future leadership represents a diverse array of backgrounds and perspectives. Voters are powerless to reward diversity when the slate is loaded with a single demographic.

Sacrifice may be the toughest challenge of all, but one thing is certain: Wealth disparity will never unite us. The stark reality is that the gap between rich and poor is growing wider by the day. One obvious remedy is to stop suffocating the middle class and allow business owners to pay their fair share of taxes – which most state they are more than willing to do without complaint – rather than enacting trickle-down experiments loaded with drastic tax cuts or complete exemptions. And when our businesses do receive modest tax cuts designed to foster economic growth, they should be sure the savings is used on new jobs and better wages. Neither of these solutions hardly sound like a sacrifice at all.

Lastly, our major media outlets reap vast profits through content designed to divide and polarize. They should take some responsibility for the problem and stop churning out biased content under the guise of supposed objectivity. The First Amendment does not trump journalistic integrity.

This story was originally published February 12, 2018 at 3:27 AM with the headline "Solutions exist for a lack of unity."