President Barack Obama, in his speech to the people of America titled “A More Perfect Union”, tackles the issue of racial/ethnic divides in America and how we tend to lose sight of what this country is and what it could become from the constant influx of negative and narrow-minded comments said by people all over the country.
Obama highlights the fact that the American people, even though they “may have different stories,” hold on to “common hopes” and that though “we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, we all want to move in the same direction”. I definitely believe that Americans tend to lose sight of what this country is – a conglomeration of different races, ethnicities, genders, sexualities, religions, classes, etc etc. We are constantly battling it out on social media and out in the streets fighting between massive groups… even though in the end, don’t we all want the same thing? Unity? Love? Cooperation? Trust? Compassion? Hope? A better future?
Probably my favorite quote from Obama’s speech was:
“…we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems… problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian but rather problems that confront us all.”
I was glad that Obama made constant references not only to black and white people in America, but also to Hispanics and Asians and immigrants who are just as much of the foundation of America as anyone else. By incorporating all of these identities into his speech, Obama makes sure that he is addressing and discussing a union in its entirety, not just a fragment of a union such as just white people or just black people.
Obama also notes that in order to better our country and to better this “union”, we all have our own specific instructions that come with who we are. For black people in America, Obama points out that they must “embrace the burdens of [their] past without becoming victims of [their] past”, and for white people, they must understand that what ails the African American community experience do not solely exist in their heads. Racial injustices happened in our past, they’re happening today, and without doing anything about it or denying them all together, they shall presume.
Another point Obama emphasizes that I especially loved was when he said:
“Your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams.”
This beautifully ties the piece together by emphasizing that the various plights of people in America should not be compared for the sole purpose of guilt, victim blaming, hostility, or anything negative of the sort. The people of America, all of them, need to come together in order to form a more perfect union, and realize that they all have the same objective and that nobody will be left behind in obtaining that objective in the end.
E367: Writing and Diversity 