It's a talking point because it forces Americans to confront their identity as a country. Can you be the home of the free and the brave if the Civil Rights act needs to be passed to guarantee freedoms? Can your declaration of independence, and a declaration that all men are created equal, reflect reality if a large portion of your population does not have equal rights?
Then there's World Wars 1 and 2, where large portions of the population fought for ideas of freedom and against tyranny only to return to a country where they weren't allowed to drink out of a water fountain, for example.
It gets talked about a lot because for a long time it wasn't talked about at all.
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