“God’s dream is that you and I and all of us will realize that we are family, that we are made for togetherness, for goodness, and for compassion.” - Desmond Tutu
On Friday, October 7, Cathy and I were the invited guests of the Filipino American Association of South DuPage for their 38 year celebration. We have been invited guests of FAASD for the last three years, and we truly enjoy this beautiful cultural celebration. Our Filipino community here in Darien is active in numerous civic, social and religious events, and I am honored by their support and their respect and love for the City of Darien.
Soon after I received our invitation to attend this year’s celebration, I was informed that they had chosen me to be the motivational speaker for this event. This is a great honor, as this role is usually delegated to a prominent member of FAASD. Joy Ranchero, President of FAASD asked that my talk address the topics of “Diversity, Acceptance, Respect” and “Learning from one another.” Given this task, I spent a considerable amount of time composing a speech that would not only address each topic, it would demonstrate how each of these is interrelated, and how they complement one another. While my speech is quite lengthy, I would like to share several excerpts with all of you.
On the topic of Diversity:
“Valuing diversity teaches respecting individuality while maintaining respect for others. It helps us to highlight the contributions of various groups in making up a community, and Darien is a community that benefits from its diverse ethnic, religious, racial and cultural populations.”
On the topic of Respect:
“While ethnic barriers have been broken, we are now dealing with new Americans of different religious, racial and cultural groups that are having a more difficult time assimilating, while trying to maintain the richness of their cultural heritage. As a society we are making efforts to accommodate these groups, but while we see an acknowledgement of their presence, we see groups in our society that demonstrate little respect for the cultural values these groups bring to our great melting pot. As Jackie Robinson, the first African American to break the color barrier of baseball stated, “I’m not concerned with your liking or disliking me... All I ask is that you respect me as a human being.”
On Acceptance and Learning:
“Unfortunately, we have somewhat lost our ability to learn from our differences; to acknowledge the differences that exist in our society, and how we can benefit from truly listening to and learn from one another.
I realize that some of what I have shared paints a dire picture of our society, but I would temper that with hope that change is taking place among many of those in our younger population. Many of the young people I come into contact with are more willing to accept the diversity of our society; they acknowledge the richness of the cultural differences in our society, and they are more apt to seek facts than to rely on information coming from biased sources. Together, let us celebrate the diversity of our community, respect the differences that exist, and acknowledge how we can all benefit and learn from one another.”
I hope that this address, while directed at one Darien citizen group, has meaning for all Darien residents.