More broadly, from the national anthem protests to the 1619 Project, there has been a growing if not always deliberate trend on the left toward treating American patriotism and racial equality as somehow in tension. They may therefore not feel included in Gay's stated desire to 'get every American a place at the table' since they must be 'separated' from America or believe she, a writer for the nation's top newspaper, is especially eager to share a democracy with them. Gay claimed that there are 'tens of millions of Trump voters who continue to believe that their rights as citizens are under threat by simple virtue of having to share the democracy with others.' But she does not recognize that many such voters will hear her call to 'separate Americanness … from whiteness' - which to those who do not share her ideological priors may sound like an attack based on skin color - as threatening.
The problems on the right are real, but liberals are not blameless for the sad state of our political discourse.
Perhaps the prevailing interpretation of Gay's comment was uncharitable, though it might be asked whether her own take on the motivations of partisans she disagrees with waving the flag of her country and theirs was sufficiently charitable.
