This last weekend, the United States put on a horror show display of intolerance in Charlottesville, Virginia. White Supremacists and Nationalists protested, and when counter protesters started turning out, things got ugly fast. In the culminating incident, James Alex Fields, Jr., a 20-year old from Ohio, rammed his car into a crowd of counter protesters and bystanders, killing one and seriously injuring several others.

Who are we that can allow, as a nation, this kind of fear mongering and hateful idealism to exist? Who are we, as a nation, that can permit views that lift one skin color and ethnic ancestral lineage up over another? Who are we, as a nation, that allows open racism, sexism, classism and religion bigotry to be on display in our public streets and squares? Have we not grown beyond these foolish views and ideas? Are we not a more enlightened society now?

It would appear not. And we are who we are.

We are a nation that was founded on ideas and principles that had never once been seen before in a government. At least not in practical application. Equality. Liberty. Social justice. Democratic voting. For one and all. Of course, political shortcuts were permitted to ensure the creation of the young nation — These principles were not to be for one and all, not for a very long time. And in some ways, not even now. But the language of our founding documents, that language was a revolutionary an act as actually picking up arms against the crown. The language…that was the unheard of aspect of our nation. That we could even think that way and in those terms, was virtually unheard of.

And sadly, not so for a majority of us, even today. Window dressing. Words as a tool, for use to gain something immediate. Not to actually live by, or build a nation on. After all, we are who we are, and who we are are the descendants of white-European stock who grew up in a very specific power structure. Once our independence was gained, and for many independence from taxation without representation was all they had been looking for, most quickly slipped back into that old power structure way of thinking. And that structure did not easily accept sharing power with newcomers, or anyone who looked or spoke differently. Those others, those strangers, they were implicitly viewed as potential threats for resources that were finite. Oh, sure, we could bring some in, especially for labor in hard, dangerous, and demanding work. Such as working fields or laying out our railroads. But to share in the prosperity that was our birthright? Ahhhhh, that was another story. And still is.

We are who we are.

But that does not mean that we are who we SHOULD be.

The Founding Fathers carefully avoided using the word “equality” in most of our early documentation. In fact, as some conservatives would be quick to remind us, equality under the law was more important and more realistic than equality guaranteed by law. Liberty meant that you could achieve anything you wanted, and you had equal opportunity to do so as any other person.

Any other white, landing owning, male person, that is.

And this is where equality under the law failed us over the years. Yes, federally speaking, we have by and large (until the last six months) been able too realize full legal protections — full equality — for different skin colors, men and women, varying religions, varying sexual orientations, etc. There are very few legal settings now were the full and equal protection of law is not afforded.

But we are who we are.

And we still erect systems and local rules that, if not outright infringing on the premise of legal equality, skirt the issue by infringing on the opportunity for equality. Capitalism is in itself an unfair, unequal form of commerce. It is an economic model that depends on INequality for it to succeed. There must be a lower class if there is to be an upper class. And that model often, and not entirely unintentionally, crosses lines to restrict opportunity based not just on income, but on race or ethnicity.

I won’t pretend to know how we will ever overcome our intrinsic bias and forge a truly equal society. All I know is that we must do so. We have to become more than who we currently are. We have to become who the Founding Fathers envisioned, to become who they wanted to be. Who we should be.