Reply #2: Love the piece on "No One Can Take My Dream of America" [View All]

[pampango]

Now I am worried that this dream, always a fragile one, is being pushed aside because of fear and misplaced anger.

Since September 11th we have been increasingly using the language of “us” and “them” but I have never, not once, felt anger toward Muslims for what happened. How could I? When I watched the towers fall, I was in class, watching with fellow Muslim students who were just as shocked and horrified as I was.

After 9/11 more American flags went up. Many Muslims were worried and anxious to prove what we already knew: that they were proud of being Americans and neither they nor their religion was the enemy. I listened with perverse pride when a Pakistani friend of mine told me that despite the backlash against Islam, she felt that the reaction against Muslims would have been worse had a similar event happened in any other country. Although that is praise, it’s not enough; in the way that being the least slow runner doesn’t make you fast. We can do better than that.

It wasn’t so long ago that Black Americans fought and even died to make the words of the Declaration of Independence true in fact and not just in theory. A mere 40-odd years ago. The civil rights movement is barely middle-aged. That victory is too recent and narrowly won to let it slip away at the first sign of struggle. There are certain things we cannot compromise on. And the idea that America should be a place where a man is judged on the strength of his character—and not the name of his God or the color of his skin—is one of those things.

http://www.onenationworkingtogether.org/news/entry/no-one-can-take-my-dream-of-america