The air of distrust could come from several different sources. First let's remember the history books where there was no mention of the contributions to this nation by any blacks except during the month of February and even still not from their pages but from other material. I call your attention to the Thanksgiving. Many conversation and speeches will encompass the Pilgrims. We will applaud and celebrate their braving the ocean waters in search of a new world where they can worship as they wish and rule themselves. Some many bring up the immigrants who passed through Ellis Island and repeat the words inscribed on the Statue of Liberty yet mention the immigrants coming from Haiti or Mexico and the feelings change. We go from celebration to activation. We stop feeling the tug on our heart strings and began to feel the butts of our guns. The pilgrims came here to worship as they wish but there are some born here who can not.
The pilgrims were welcomed while others are not and wonder why there's distrust. We embrace the Indians who tamed this land long before any one else stepped foot on it only to later screw them out of the promises made and wonder why there's distrust. We promise slaves that if they served in the Civil War, afterwards they would receive 40 acres and a mule only to renege on that promise and wonder why there's distrust. We promised and promised, each time those promises as empty as those of many politicians and wonder why there's distrust.
This country has come a long way to fix some of these issues but the history still remains and that is why there is distrust. If it is our goal to make a more perfect union, we must be willing to accept that we are not perfect, that there will be mistakes and missteps, that these mistakes and missteps does make us weaker but makes us stronger. We must be willing to remember the past but not re-live it. We must be willing to accept the fact that not all of us will agree on the same thing, the same way at the same time, that our differences and our ability to bridge them is the fuel which powers that beacon on the hill. That in order for anyone to enjoy life we all must be allowed to live. We must understand that our differences does make us enemies, it makes us free.
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