I’m sure that everyone who was excited about today’s inauguration of the 44th President of the United States of America, has some favorite part – a line, a phrase – of the inaugural speech. Didn’t get to watch/hear it? You can read it here.
My favorite part was, probably predictably if you know me well enough, this:
For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus – and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.
It’s a sentiment that speaks to my own multi-cultural background, my optimistic point of view, my love for travel and diverse cultures, and part of what I liked about Obama in the first place. May we, this time, act on such sentiments and move the human race forward, not backwards.
Updated 01/22/2009: Here’s a couple of links to related topics:
In First Family, a Nation’s Many Faces
The president’s elderly stepgrandmother brought him an oxtail fly whisk, a mark of power at home in Kenya. Cousins journeyed from the South Carolina town where the first lady’s great-great-grandfather was born into slavery, while the rabbi in the family came from the synagogue where he had been commemorating Martin Luther King’s Birthday. The president and first lady’s siblings were there, too, of course: his Indonesian-American half-sister, who brought her Chinese-Canadian husband, and her brother, a black man with a white wife.
When President Barack Obama was sworn in on Tuesday, he was surrounded by an extended clan that would have shocked past generations of Americans and instantly redrew the image of a first family for future ones.
[…]
For well over two centuries, the United States has been vastly more diverse than its ruling families. Now the Obama family has flipped that around, with a Technicolor cast that looks almost nothing like their overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly Protestant predecessors in the role. The family that produced Barack and Michelle Obama is black and white and Asian, Christian, Muslim and Jewish. They speak English; Indonesian; French; Cantonese; German; Hebrew; African languages including Swahili, Luo and Igbo; and even a few phrases of Gullah, the Creole dialect of the South Carolina Lowcountry. Very few are wealthy, and some — like Sarah Obama, the stepgrandmother who only recently got electricity and running water in her metal-roofed shack — are quite poor.
“Our family is new in terms of the White House, but I don’t think it’s new in terms of the country,” Maya Soetoro-Ng, the president’s younger half-sister, said last week. “I don’t think the White House has always reflected the textures and flavors of this country.”
[…]
The Foreign (Student) Perspective on America’s Historic Day
Charlotte Junius, a German student interning in Washington, saw something she did not quite expect Tuesday during the inauguration of President Obama. Near her vantage point, in the shadow of the Washington Monument, she was surrounded not only by hundreds of thousands of American citizens but also a healthy dose of foreign visitors, all packed onto the National Mall to witness history.