We were very impressed by the outstanding TED talk by journalist and author Anand Giridharadas. This talk was featured during the free TED stories segment on March 17th.

We were particularly excited by Anand’s very convincing description about how important it is to give a chance to the disadvantaged youth right here at home in America. That is certainly what we aim to do at “I Have a Dream” Foundation – Los Angeles: bringing the advantages of graduating from high school and entering college to at-risk youth living in our worst neighborhoods in Los Angeles. Family members as well as the communities of our Dreamers are impacted.

Anand Giridharadas was born in Ohio to Indian immigrant parents. Anand published a book last year called “The True American: Murder and Mercy in Texas.”

During this TED talk Giridharadas summarized the emotionally charged plot of his book about the immigrant from Bangladesh shooting victim Raisuddin and his white supremist assailant Stroman. Then he spoke about income inequality.

“The closer Raisuddin got to the America he’d dreamed of from afar, the more he realized there was another America that was stingier with second chances,” says Giridharadas. “A newly minted American citizen, Raisuddin had come to believe that Stroman was the product of a hurting America that couldn’t be lethally injected away.”

These are the two Americas that Giridharadas sees in this story: “An America that still dreams, strives, imagines that tomorrow can build on today — and an America that has resigned to fate, buckled under stress and chaos, lowered expectations. It was Raisuddin, despite being a newcomer, despite being attacked, despite being homeless and traumatized, who belonged to that republic of dreams. And Stroman who belonged to that other, wounded country, despite being born with the privilege of a native white man.”

In the end, Raisuddin wasn’t able to save Mark. But the fact that he even wanted to offers an important lesson for us all.

“If human history were a parade, America’s float would be a neon shrine to second chances. But America, generous with second chances for the children of other lands, today grows more miserly with first chances for the children of its own.” – Anand Giridharadas

“Don’t console yourself that you are the 99 percent. If you live near a Whole Foods,” he said. “If no relative of yours serves in the military; If you’re paid by the year, not the hour; If no one you know uses meth; If you married once and remain married; If most people you know finished college; If you aren’t one of 65 million Americans with a criminal record. If any or all of these things describe you, then accept the possibility that, actually, you may not know what’s going on, and you may be part of the problem.”

He was not talking about 99% versus the 1%. The people who fit his description are “probably 20% to 30% of Americans,” he said. “This would include a secretary at GlaxoSmithKline, for example. If you’re a small business owner making $200,000 a year, America is working for you.”

“The moral challenge of my generation, I believe, is to reacquaint these two Americas,” he says. “It is a moral challenge that begs each of us in the flourishing America to take on the wilting America as our own. As Raisuddin tried to do.”

“A republic of chances — rewoven, renewed, It begins with us.”

Transcript:
14:31
If human history were a parade, America’s float would be a neon shrine to second chances. But America, generous with second chances to the children of other lands, today grows miserly with first chances to the children of its own. America still dazzles at allowing anybody to become an American. But it is losing its luster at allowing every American to become a somebody.

15:06
Over the last decade, seven million foreigners gained American citizenship. Remarkable. In the meanwhile, how many Americans gained a place in the middle class? Actually, the net influx was negative. Go back further, and it’s even more striking: Since the 60s, the middle class has shrunk by 20 percent, mainly because of the people tumbling out of it. And my reporting around the country tells me the problem is grimmer than simple inequality. What I observe is a pair of secessions from the unifying center of American life. An affluent secession of up, up and away, into elite enclaves of the educated and into a global matrix of work, money and connections, and an impoverished secession of down and out into disconnected, dead-end lives that the fortunate scarcely see.

16:06
And don’t console yourself that you are the 99 percent. If you live near a Whole Foods, if no one in your family serves in the military, if you’re paid by the year, not the hour, if most people you know finished college, if no one you know uses meth, if you married once and remain married, if you’re not one of 65 million Americans with a criminal record — if any or all of these things describe you, then accept the possibility that actually, you may not know what’s going on and you may be part of the problem.

16:53
Other generations had to build a fresh society after slavery, pull through a depression, defeat fascism,freedom-ride in Mississippi. The moral challenge of my generation, I believe, is to reacquaint these two Americas, to choose union over secession once again. This ins’t a problem we can tax or tax-cut away. It won’t be solved by tweeting harder, building slicker apps, or starting one more artisanal coffee roasting service. It is a moral challenge that begs each of us in the flourishing America to take on the wilting America as our own, as Raisuddin tried to do.

17:43
Like him, we can make pilgrimages. And there, in Baltimore and Oregon and Appalachia, find new purpose, as he did. We can immerse ourselves in that other country, bear witness to its hopes and sorrows, and, like Raisuddin, ask what we can do. What can you do? What can you do? What can we do? How might we build a more merciful country?

18:17
We, the greatest inventors in the world, can invent solutions to the problems of that America, not only our own. We, the writers and the journalists, can cover that America’s stories, instead of shutting down bureaus in its midst. We can finance that America’s ideas, instead of ideas from New York and San Francisco. We can put our stethoscopes to its backs, teach there, go to court there, make there, live there, pray there.

18:49
This, I believe, is the calling of a generation. An America whose two halves learn again to stride, to plow, to forge, to dare together. A republic of chances, rewoven, renewed, begins with us.

19:14
Thank you.