Biden's inauguration was a Frederick Douglass dream made real. We should be proud.

• Former slave Frederick Douglass was one of the greatest American intellectuals to ever live, and he dreamed that his country would live up to its promise and become a true multiracial democracy.
• It has been a violent struggle every step of the way.
• But Biden's inauguration was a tribute to what America can look and feel like when we get it right. Douglass would have been proud.
• This is an opinion column. The thoughts expressed are those of the author.

The United States wraps its culture in spectacle, just like every nation and every people. Our country holds inaugurations to present the world and ourselves with who we are, and at President Joe Biden's inauguration we showed the world what a multicultural, pluralistic democracy looks like. Frederick Douglass, one of our country's first and greatest Black intellectuals, would be proud.

A dream of a multicultural America

Douglass is most remembered in our history for speaking eloquently against the evils of slavery, an institution he escaped himself. But in the aftermath of the Civil War Douglass articulated another hope for America, that we would embrace people from all over the world as long as they, in turn, embraced democracy. He believed we could change the meaning and face of a republic.

Of course, with this hope new battle lines were drawn. In Douglass' day America's struggle shifted. The country would no longer be divided between those who wished to continue slavery and those who did not. The lines, instead, were drawn between those who shared in Douglass' egalitarian vision, and those who wished to continue white supremacy. He knew that a nation that denied the parity of its citizens could never be a true democracy.

This has been our nation's defining struggle ever since.

In the 1860s and 1870s as American started pushing building in the Western parts of the country, Chinese immigrants came to work on our shores. This wave of immigration was debated in political circles as "the Chinese question." To Douglass the answer was obvious. He was a fierce advocate for absorbing and learning from Chinese immigrants.

"Would you have them naturalized and have them invested with all the rights of American citizenship," he asked in a speech. "I would." In Douglass' view this was the path forward for America, but the politics of his day instead pushed us back. The US passed the first Chinese Exclusion Act - prohibiting immigration from all Chinese laborers - in 1882.

Choose America

And so it is only fitting that one of President Biden's acts will be to lift the ban imposed by former President Donald Trump on immigration from majority Muslim nations. The creation of the ban and its repeal shows that America is still fighting the battle along the lines Douglass identified, and the fighting has been especially fierce over the last five years, the past five months, the past five weeks.

We have seen - naked in its shamelessness - racism and antidemocratic violence in word and deed from the highest levels of government. This is a repudiation of Douglass' vision, something to be feared and fought. They sell us an America that would tear itself apart.

The pomp and circumstance of Biden's greeting to an exhausted nation included the first Black president; the first Black (and female and South Asian) vice president; Jennifer Lopez, a Latina pop star calling for "liberty and justice for all" in Spanish; a 22-year-old Black female poet laureate; country singer Garth Brooks in a cowboy hat; and Lady Gaga, a fierce supporter and advocate for queer Americans.

There was a time in the not too recent past when many Americans took pageantry and diversity of an event like this for granted, but in the last five years we've learned that America does not move in a straight line toward and more just and equitable future. There is no end of history. There is no "set it and forget it" democracy. We can be turned back. We can, sometimes, make the wrong choice about which side of Douglass' debate we are on.

As Douglass said himself: "Will you repeat the mistakes of your fathers who sinned ignorantly? Will the country be peaceful, united and happy or troubled, divided and miserable?"

President Biden's inauguration was a reflection of our intention to choose a better America. It will not be easy, but we can push forward using the power of that intention. We can make the spectacle real.