Assimilating Diversity
Posted : June 9, 2006 at 12:45 pm [America/Los_Angeles]
I went to a high school graduation Monday and a United Nations meeting broke out. The commencement was my daughter Natalie’s, the high school was Montgomery Blair in Silver Spring, Md. There were some 700 kids receiving their diplomas, and as I sat there for two hours listening to each one’s name pronounced, I became both fascinated and touched by the stunning diversity — race, religion, ethnicity — of the graduating class. I knew my daughter’s school was diverse, but I had no idea it was this diverse. The names…which I just pulled from the graduation book, were typical of her entire class, which included exactly five people named “Smith.” In my high school in Minnesota it seemed like there were only five people not named “Smith.”…
It is hard to watch a graduation like this and not think about our enemies in Iraq and Afghanistan — the Taliban, Islamo-totalitarians like bin Laden and Zarqawi, and the retrograde regimes that support them. Their whole mind-set is about how to purify their world from “the other,” from diversity, from “infidels.” With enough brutality, they may win in Iraq…But they will never win the future — because as soon as their oil wells run dry, their societies will be as barren, bland and unproductive as their deserts. Our oil wells, by contrast, will still be pumping. They’re right there, hiding in plain sight, in the Blair commencement book: Yueyang Li, Kenia Lopez-Reyes, Lucy Fromyer, Raya Steinberg, Zahra Gordon, Sreva Ghosh, Juan-Jesus Louis, Yendil Furcal, Yenusa Eke, Sofonias Frezghi, Yohanes Dejen, Edra Comegys-Brisbane, Yoel Castillio-Ortiz, Elijah Zuares, Placido Zelaya, Mimi Zou. And Jessica Smith.
- Thomas Friedman, “A Well of Smiths and Xias”
My favorite line from the article - “Our Chinese will still beat their Chinese.” Only time will tell 
- Anand
Category: US |
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