Williams - We the people: the modern-day figures who have reshaped and affirmed the Founding Fathers vision of America

What happened to my America?

Why dont those people speak English?

And Mr. Williams, dont take this the wrong way, butyou know, at the donut shop, at the gas station, in the schoolyardhave you ever seen so many immigrants, especially the Latinos everywhere?

These kids are so thuggish.Do you see any reason to be confident in this countrys future?

After the 2012 presidential election I heard those kinds of urgent questions from older white conservatives. They seemed disoriented. With obvious anxiety they felt the cycle of history spinning away from them, leaving them dizzy and angry at being pushed away from the center of politics and culture by the emerging New America.

One poll found 53 percent of white Americans saying the changes in culture, economics, demographics, and politics were coming too quickly and damaging Americas character and values.

This sense of disillusionment is not limited to older white conservatives. In the same 2011 poll, done by Heartland Monitor, the National Journal, and Allstate, 51 percent of African Americans said they too felt all the demographic and political churning was too much and the trends are troubling.

A 2015 poll done by Reuters and Ipsos found that 62 percent of Republicans, 53 percent of Independents, and 37 percent of Democrats feel like a stranger in [their] own country. Another 72 percent of Republicans, 58 percent of Independents, and 45 percent of Democrats dont identify with what America has become.

I myself am hardly immune from this national anxiety over change, and it hit me personally eight years before the 2012 election, in 2004. That year I turned fifty and felt the new realities of life pushing against me everywhere.

Just think about how much the world changed during my first fifty years on Earth.

When I was born, in 1954, people who looked like me sat at the back of the bus, drank out of separate water fountains, and went to separate schools. Eighty-nine years after the end of the Civil War, my father, an immigrant black man, could not get anything but a low-end job in most American companies. He could not go to most American schools, could not live in most American neighborhoods, and was not allowed to swim in most pools, golf on most courses, or go to most amusement parks.

My mother, who was born in Panama, did not see Latinos as a major force in American life. The census did not even bother to count the number of Latinos in the United States during the 1950s. In 1970 Latinos in the United States added up to less than 5 percent of the population. Today Latinos make up over 17 percent of the U.S. population, outnumbering blacks as the largest minority group.

In 1954 abortion was not a critical political issue. The idea of women controlling the rights to their own fertility and their bodies was not a culture war argument splitting conservatives and liberals. Fifty years ago U.S. government policy, supported by conservatives, promoted family planning. It was seen as a boon to parents, allowing them to better provide for a smaller number of children.

In the 1950s there was no controversy over homosexuality, largely because society was not willing to have the conversation. My mom had a gay male friend who came by the apartment regularly to design and sew dresses. Yet I never heard him or anyone else talk about gay rights. Gays remained in the closet for fear of persecution.

What a different America I saw in 2004. The leaps in the nations demographics, economy, and culture made it feel to me like hundreds of years had passed.

America went from allowing smoking everywhere to banning smoking everywhere. Gambling went from the street corner numbers man to government-run lotteries. The rising presence and influence of women in corporate America, the military, and the media shifted the power equation between the sexes, as more women decided they did not need a man to support themselves, to live a full life, or even to have a child. In fact, women began to outnumber men in colleges and graduate schools. They became the majority of the workforce as male-dominated blue-collar jobs went to Asia. Conversations about gay rights morphed into court cases about the right of gays to have legal, state-approved marriages.

Essential fibers of the social fabricpublic schools, for examplebegan to fray, leading to calls for reform (charter schools, magnet schools, and vouchers) that would allow parents and students greater choice to find the best school for their needs. America experienced its first major gun control movement, saw the rise of a national gun lobby, and endured a spike in mass shootings in schools around the country.

And there was wholesale change in the federal government in the decades following World War II. We saw postwar America become the global arsenal of democracy that President Franklin D. Roosevelt had promised it would back in 1940, protecting far-flung regions of the world from Soviet communism. We witnessed the South become a Republican stronghold. That led to a conservative political revolution that culminated in the presidency of Ronald Reagan.

New technology emerged, changing the way Americans communicate, process information, and form relationships. It seemed that within just a few years suddenly everyone had a cell phone. New cable television channels, hundreds of them, appeared in everyones home. Internet and podcast programming moved entertainment to new platforms. And today we can use apps such as OkCupid and Tinder to find people to date in our local area.