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" Identity in America is complicated but it's also simple: it's about whom you identify with and who identifies with you. "
Eric Liu
Who
Simple
Identity
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" What we should celebrate more than diversity is what we do with it. How do we bring everyone in the tent and create something together? In a twenty-first century way that activates our true potential, we all need to become sworn-again. "
Eric Liu
Celebrate
Together
Create
" We all want merit to mean something, and we all may be tempted to reduce that meaning to something measurable and concrete like an SAT score. The reality, though, is that who deserves entry into an institution depends on what the institution exists to do. "
Eric Liu
Mean
Want
Reality
" Much of our national debate proceeds as if China and America were locked in a zero-sum game in which one's loss is precisely the other's gain. "
Eric Liu
China
America
Debate
" Many smart folks seem to think that if you just get your metaphors and messages right, you'll win. That if you start describing what you favor as a 'moral value' - 'affordable health care is a moral value' etc., - then you'll appeal to red-state voters. "
Eric Liu
Win
Health
Smart
" The nativism behind the push to repeal or amend the Fourteenth is ugly and obvious. "
Eric Liu
Behind
Obvious
Push
" America is exceptional: but because it yields the likes of Obama, not the likes of Bush. "
Eric Liu
Likes
Exceptional
Because
" Today, public understanding of our past and our system of government is pitifully low. "
Eric Liu
Government
Past
Today
" My grandfather was a general in the Nationalist Chinese Air Force during World War II, and I grew up hearing the pilot stories and seeing pictures of him in uniform. "
Eric Liu
World
Air
Air Force
" If the undocumented have to work hard to attain citizenship, those of us who already are citizens should have to work hard to sustain it. We should all have to serve more, vote more, build more, and do more for our country. "
Eric Liu
Citizenship
Hard
Vote
" I know many people on the left are suspicious of words like Americanization. To them, it can sound like a cover for white privilege and warmongering. It suggests arrogance and groupthink. But these connotations are not fixed. It is in our power to reshape them by recalling the best of America. "
Eric Liu
People
America
Best
" The Boomers will eventually have to accept that it is not possible to stay forever young or to stop aging. But it is possible, by committing to show up for others in community after community, to earn a measure of immortality. "
Eric Liu
Community
Stop
Accept
" Americans need to call on Boomers, in their next act onstage, to behave like grown-ups. And there is no better way for them to do this than to guide young people to lives of greater meaning, effectiveness, and purpose. "
Eric Liu
Need
Better
Purpose
" As it stands now, those of us who are lucky enough to be citizens by birth don't have to do much. Very little is asked of us. "
Eric Liu
Little
Birth
Enough
" Throughout this country's history there have of course been systematic efforts to create an official underclass. "
Eric Liu
Been
History
Country
" Conservatives forget that citizenship is more than a thing to withhold from immigrants. Progressives forget it's more than a set of rights. "
Eric Liu
Rights
Forget
Citizenship
" Great numbers of Asian Americans do not fit the model minority or 'tiger family' stereotypes, living instead in multigenerational poverty far from the mainstream. "
Eric Liu
Poverty
Tiger
Family
" We tend to think of politics as bad, full of dirty tricks, negative ads, big campaigns, but I am here to explore the original meaning of politics, which is positive and has to do with balancing competing interests and looking for solutions. "
Eric Liu
I Am
Politics
Think
" Sometimes when I listen to fellow progressives, I wonder if the only lesson we took away from the '04 elections is that politics is a word game. "
Eric Liu
Game
Politics
Wonder
" In the end no segregationist scheme has withstood the force of a simple idea: equality under law. "
Eric Liu
In The End
Simple
Equality
" Have you ever watched someone become American? Last week, at a national citizenship conference I organize, thirty immigrants from 17 countries swore an oath and became citizens of the United States. It was a stirring experience for the hundreds of people in the room. "
Eric Liu
Experience
Week
You
" We live in a great country. It's time again to get religion about it. "
Eric Liu
Time
Great
Country
" Race in America has always centered on our mutual agreement not to see each other. White or non-white. Black or non-black. Mongoloid, Hindoo. We've always bought into to the crudest, humanity-denying forms of sorting. "
Eric Liu
White
See
Race
" Talk of citizenship today is often thin and tinny. The word has a faintly old-fashioned feel to it when used in everyday conversation. When evoked in national politics, it's usually accompanied by the shrill whine of a descending culture-war mortar. "
Eric Liu
Conversation
Feel
Today
" There have been, in recent years, many Asian American pioneers in the public eye who've defied the condescendingly complimentary 'model minority' stereotype: actors like Lucy Liu, artists like Maya Lin, moguls like Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh. They are known, often admired. "
Eric Liu
Stereotype
Like
Years
" In the end, arguing about affirmative action in selective colleges is like arguing about the size of a spigot while ignoring the pool and the pipeline that feed it. Slots at Duke and Princeton and Cal are finite. "
Eric Liu
Action
Like
Pool
" Why does an iPhone cost only a couple hundred dollars? Because, as the stage performer Mike Daisey depicted in an arresting one-man show called 'The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs,' Apple's shiniest products are made by a shadowy company in China called Foxconn. "
Eric Liu
Apple
Why
Stage
" Today's multiracial Americans are at greater liberty to choose how they'd like to be seen, and under less pressure to pass for white. "
Eric Liu
Choose
White
Today
" Here's a proposal, offered only partly in jest: no resident of the United States, whether born here or abroad, should get to be a citizen until age 18, at which time each such resident has to take a test. "
Eric Liu
Citizen
Here
Age
" If half-black Barack Obama had decided years ago to call himself white - which his genes certainly entitled him to do - his story would have carried very different meaning. If millions of part-black people had followed him into whiteness, then the N.A.A.C.P. would be in true crisis. "
Eric Liu
White
Him
Story
" Like the 'little emperors' of one-child China, too many Boomers were taught early that the world was made (or saved) for their comfort and enjoyment. They behaved accordingly, with a self-indulgence that was wholly rational, given their situation. "
Eric Liu
World
Early
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