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" 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. "

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" Why should citizenship be a matter of birth? The premise held by those who want to end birthright citizenship is that some people deserve it and some do not - that the status shouldn't be handed out automatically. Frankly, that's a premise worth considering. "

Eric Liu

Citizenship

End

People

" To be sure, the United States has profound problems, not least our faltering educational and physical infrastructure. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" We live in a great country. It's time again to get religion about it. "

" After watching my first World Series in 1977, I wanted to be Reggie Jackson. I bought a big Reggie poster. I ate Reggie candy bars. I entered a phase during which I insisted on having the same style of glasses Reggie had: gold wire frames with the double bar across. "

" Imagine filling a college with the first 1,000 students to get perfect SATs. Whatever the racial composition of that class would be, the notion seems absurd because we know that college in America is supposed to be about creating citizens and leaders in a diverse nation. "

" 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. "

" America is exceptional: but because it yields the likes of Obama, not the likes of Bush. "

" Conservatives forget that citizenship is more than a thing to withhold from immigrants. Progressives forget it's more than a set of rights. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" When Bryan Price taught me how to throw a changeup, he made me see myself. All my life, I've been the equivalent of a fastball pitcher - trying to use blazing speed and brute force to wow the people around me. "

Eric Liu

Life

My Life

" The summer of 1991, I took $2,000 of my savings and a desktop program, and I asked my friends to write 800 words about something they cared about. I got eight or nine articles and put them together. It was no frills, black and white, no graphics. I printed them out and just dumped piles around D.C. "

" Today, public understanding of our past and our system of government is pitifully low. "

" 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. "

" You want to defend citizenship? Don't persecute or isolate those without papers. Just live like a citizen. That'd be a first-class way to be American. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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

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

Pool

" If whiteness were of no particular advantage, then having a fuller color wheel of skin tones would be purely a matter of celebration. But whiteness - just a drop of it - does still carry privilege. You learn that very young in America. "

" Identity in America is complicated but it's also simple: it's about whom you identify with and who identifies with you. "

" Throughout this country's history there have of course been systematic efforts to create an official underclass. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" You cannot mistake Bush's clarity of purpose. He believes in a story about freedom and opportunity that makes his followers feel like they aren't just ticking their days down but are part of something larger than themselves. "

" The nativism behind the push to repeal or amend the Fourteenth is ugly and obvious. "

" The next time someone uses denial of citizenship as a weapon or brandishes the special status conferred upon him by the accident of birth, ask him this: What have you done lately to earn it? "

" 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. "