In our digital age, we’ve developed a habit of sorting complex problems into opposing camps. Too often, conversations about race, history, and justice slide into a rigid “us versus them” framework, one group blamed, another resentful; one group protected, another feeling overlooked.
But looking back at the giants of American history, the most durable progress did not begin at the political fringes. It began in the difficult, active middle—not a place of passive compromise, but a commitment to a shared standard. It began with a different word: we.
We often treat the “middle ground” as weakness. History tells us the opposite. The middle is the load-bearing structure that keeps a society from snapping toward the extremes. It is the vital center that allows a diverse democracy to function at all.
Consider Frederick Douglass, the formerly enslaved abolitionist, writer, and statesman who became one of the most powerful voices for equality in American history (learn more). He had every reason to retreat into a “them” mindset, yet he became one of the strongest believers in the American we. Douglass understood a hard truth about human nature: left on our own, people tend to protect those most like themselves and overlook those who are not.
Because of that reality, he argued that fairness does not happen by accident. Government, he believed, had a duty to protect the rights of all citizens. For Douglass, the middle ground was not about splitting the difference between right and wrong; it was about holding the line for a single, universal standard of justice. If fairness applies only to “us,” it is no longer fairness, it is simply power.
We see the same philosophy in Mary McLeod Bethune, educator, civil rights leader, and founder of what is now Bethune-Cookman University (learn more). As an adviser to President Franklin D. Roosevelt and founder of the National Council of Negro Women, she worked to expand educational and economic opportunity nationwide. She rejected the idea that progress was a zero-sum game. Her work was built on partnership across race, class, and background, grounded in the belief that strengthening opportunity for one group ultimately strengthens the whole society.
Bethune understood that real progress does not come from choosing sides, but from accepting shared responsibility. The middle ground, as she practiced it, was not moral neutrality, but moral discipline. It was the place where cooperation replaced outrage, and standards and integrity replaced political slogans.
This “we” mindset is exactly what our moment demands. The extremes are easy. They offer the comfort of certainty and the clarity of an enemy. The vital center is harder. It requires restraint, empathy, and the willingness to ask a more productive question: What are we doing to one another, and how do we fix it?
This is not about minimizing injustice. It is about recognizing that when “us versus them” becomes our primary language, we lose the ability to govern ourselves. Choosing we is a rejection of the idea that we are better off divided.
History suggests that when we move forward together, we don’t just move faster, we move higher.
By Gregory Murphy, PE
Chief Executive Officer
