QUOTES
How
do we free ourselves from our past, if we do not even know this past?”
The
task for me is to not only comprehend the world, but to change the world. I would
like to see a world where America lives up to its ideals, and resolves the contradiction
between reality and principles.
The
nation was founded and “dedicated,” to use Lincoln’s language in the “Gettysburg
Address,” to equality as a “self-evident truth.” But this very principle of equality,
as Lincoln also noted, was a “proposition.” To make it a reality remained “the
unfinished work” of Americans.
How
can diverse Americans become "one people"? I believe that one path is for us to
pursue the study of the past that includes all of us, making all of us feel connected
to one another as "we the people," working and living in a nation, founded and
"dedicated" (to use Lincoln's language) to the "proposition" that "all men are
created equal."
"Our
expanding ethnic diversity of this century, a time when we will all be minorities,
offers us an invitation to create a larger memory of who we are as Americans and
to re-affirm our founding principle of equality. Let's put aside fears of the
"disuniting of America" and warnings of the "clash of civilizations." As Langston
Hughes sang, "Let America be America, where equality is in the air we breathe."
