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He was a good-looking kid, six two, six three, clear eyed, with an easy smile. And slowly, I came to realize that something was missing as well - that without an anchor for my beliefs, without a commitment to a particular community of faith, at some level I would always remain apart, and alone. And it's around this time that some pastors I was working with came up to me and asked if I was a member of a church. This bond is unbreakable.
"I'm here because of Ashley." By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. Moreover, freedom in America is indivisible from the freedom to practice one's religion. We did not go by choice, we went because of necessity. Suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away.
These are my heroes. For over a thousand years, Al-Azhar has stood as a beacon of Islamic learning, and for over a century, Cairo University has been a source of Egypt's advancement.
It's an idea that's often forgotten or dismissed in cynical times. Because if you don't have any fresh ideas, then you use stale tactics to scare the voters. Let us keep that promise - that American promise - and in the words of Scripture hold firmly, without wavering, to the hope that we confess. But my personal story is not so unique. But that is not yet the case.
They saw that I knew the Scriptures and that many of the values I held and that propelled me in my work were values they shared. But as Americans, we also know that this is a nation of laws, and we cannot have those laws broken when more than 2,000 people cross our borders illegally every day. As such, Reverend Wright's comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems - two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all. The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we've never really worked through - a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. These are not whiners.
Thank you very much everybody.