This is not sustainable.
America works best when we see one another as people first.
There are times when you have to stop looking only at the business in front of you and look at the country around you. Lately, that has been on my mind a lot.
I see the stress people are carrying every day: the cost of living, uncertainty around jobs, housing, healthcare, education, safety, and the future our children will inherit. I see how quickly a disagreement turns into a fight and how people are pressured to choose a side before they have even been allowed to think.
And I keep coming back to one conclusion: This is not sustainable.
Not socially. Not economically. Not politically. And certainly not as a strategy for America’s long-term success.
We cannot keep building a country where every issue becomes a weapon, every person who thinks differently becomes the enemy, and every community is sorted into a political section as if people’s lives, hopes, and struggles can fit neatly into a red box or a blue box.
“There is not a liberal America and a conservative America—there is the United States of America.”
That statement, shared by Barack Obama years ago, feels just as important today. Families in every community want to afford groceries, live safely, give their children a better chance, earn enough to live, feel respected, and believe there is still a real path forward. Those are not Democratic concerns or Republican concerns. Those are American concerns.
We are allowing division to become the business model
Politics has always involved disagreement. It should. Healthy disagreement can test ideas, correct bad decisions, and help us find better solutions. But disagreement is not the same thing as division.
Division happens when people believe the other side is not simply wrong, but unworthy of being heard. It happens when we celebrate humiliation more than progress and when outrage gets more attention than understanding.
It is easy to build an audience by making people angry. It is harder to build a future by helping people work together. John McCain said, “We are Americans first, Americans last, Americans always.” That is a standard we have to find our way back to.
Our country cannot keep treating every election, school board meeting, workplace policy, city decision, and public conversation as a chance to defeat somebody else. That mindset reaches the economy, our schools, our companies, and the way our children see one another. When that happens, everybody loses.
The cost of turning inclusion into a dirty word
We need a more honest conversation about the way words like woke and DEI have been turned into political weapons. People may have valid concerns about how programs are designed or implemented, and any program should be measured by whether it creates real opportunity, fairness, accountability, and results.
But that is very different from treating diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging as if they are a threat to America. They are not.
A company does not become weaker because talented people from different backgrounds are in the room. It becomes stronger. A city does not lose its identity because it makes room for more people. It becomes more capable. A nation does not fall behind because it recognizes opportunity has not always been evenly distributed. It falls behind when it refuses to see the talent it is leaving on the sidelines.
Innovation requires different perspectives: people who see a problem differently, ask a different question, understand a different customer, or bring a life experience someone else in the room does not have.
As a business leader, I cannot look at technology, infrastructure, healthcare, education, telecommunications, or entrepreneurship and believe we will win by making our talent pool smaller. We will not innovate our way forward by discouraging people from participating or build stronger companies by making people feel like they must hide who they are.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. reminded us that “justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love.” That does not mean avoiding hard conversations. It means having them with humanity still intact.
Immigration is not only a political issue. It is a human and economic issue.
America has always had to balance security, law, order, and the need for a workable immigration system. Those are serious issues and they deserve serious solutions. But alienating whole groups of people is not a solution.
People who come here looking for safety, opportunity, education, work, and a future for their families are not merely political talking points. They are human beings: entrepreneurs, builders, caregivers, engineers, technicians, teachers, students, and future business leaders. They contribute to neighborhoods, institutions, supply chains, and industries across this country.
When we make people feel unwelcome because of where they were born or how they look, we are doing more than hurting them. We are weakening ourselves. We are telling talent and future entrepreneurs to go elsewhere. That is not strength. That is self-inflicted limitation.
Dwight Eisenhower spoke of a world where people could live together through “mutual respect and love.” Respect is not weakness. It is how diverse people, companies, and nations build enough trust to work together.
Business leaders have a responsibility here
I have had to reflect on my own role in all of this. As businesspeople, we are at the center of these issues whether we admit it or not. We hire people, create workplace culture, choose who receives an opportunity, determine what leadership we reward, and help shape the communities where our companies operate.
We are not outside of the problem. We are at the epicenter of it. The question is whether we will help build an economy where more people can participate, or one where opportunity keeps narrowing.
Will we invest in people before they are fully polished? Will we create room for young professionals who do not yet have the right relationship, ZIP code, or last name? Will we build teams that reflect the world we serve? Or will we continue to protect our comfort while calling it progress?
Long-term gain should not be built on top of someone else’s long-term suffering. If a company grows while its people cannot afford to live, something is wrong. If a city develops while longtime residents are pushed further away from opportunity, something is wrong. Success is not only about what we build. It is also about who gets to build with us.
We need a different kind of courage
The people we admire across history did not all agree on everything. Barack Obama, Bernie Sanders, Dwight Eisenhower, John McCain, Dr. King, Angie Nixon, and Keisha Lance Bottoms each come from different eras, experiences, and political traditions. But the better parts of their messages share a common thread: people matter, democracy requires participation, and opportunity should not be reserved for the few.
You do not have to agree with every policy position of every person named above to understand the larger point. America works best when we see one another as people first.
We need the courage to reject the easy language of contempt, the discipline to listen to people whose experiences differ from ours, and the humility to stop pretending someone else’s pain is not our concern because it does not touch our household, business, neighborhood, or party today. Eventually, it will touch all of us.
The question in front of us
I am not writing this because I believe I have every answer. I do not. I am writing it because I believe we are asking too few of the right questions.
- What kind of country are we building for the next generation?
- What does a strong economy mean if working people cannot get ahead?
- What does innovation mean if we are closing doors to talent?
- What does patriotism mean if we only care about people who look like us, vote like us, or agree with us?
- What does leadership mean if we are willing to benefit from systems that keep others suffering?
These questions show up in our boardrooms, classrooms, churches, neighborhoods, voting booths, and dinner tables. I believe America still has the capacity to lead, innovate, create, and inspire the world. But we will not do it by becoming smaller in spirit, making enemies out of one another, or allowing division to become normal.
This is not sustainable. But it does not have to be permanent.
The future can still be shaped by people who choose understanding over outrage, opportunity over exclusion, and long-term shared progress over short-term personal gain. That is the kind of America I want to help build.
Until next time,
Ken