Amy Chua's Poetic License

In the blockbuster Broadway hit play Hamilton Lin-Manuel Miranda brilliantly used an all-minority cast to portray America's founding fathers. This was a radical - and radically patriotic - move.

Hamilton doesn't deny American racism or injustice. On the contrary, the pointed casting draws attention to those historically excluded from center stage in the the nation's creation and reminds us that America's ideals always far exceed its realty. But the play is also a reminder that this country's history is built on principles that transcend their time. It testifies to the aspirations that every American, regardless of ethnicity or race, can embrace the nation's history and identity as his or her own. It gives a voice to an America that is not rooted in blood or parentage, that is open to people of all different ethnicities, and that allows - indeed gains strength from allowing - all those subgroup identities to flourish. It speaks for the idea of America as a super-group.

What holds America together is the American Dream. But it must be a version of the dream that recognizes past failure instead of denying it. Failures are part and parcel of the story line of a country founded n hope, a country where there's always more to be done.
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Dreams are not real, but they can be made so. The American Dream is a promise of freedom and hope for every individual on these shores. But it is also a call on all of us to make true the myths we tell ourselves about what America has always been. More than anyone else, Langston Hughes was the poet of this dream. In his 1935 poem "Let America be America Again," he writes:

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—
Let it be that great strong land of love

But then a second voice enters:

(It never was America to me.)

The first voice replies

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?

And the second answers:

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

But far from concluding with defeat Hughes offers a prayer and an affirmation:

O, let America be America again—
The land that never has been yet—
And yet must be—the land where every man is free.

[...]

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!