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I remember when I first found out
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I was going to speak at a TED conference.
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I ran across the hall
to one of my classrooms
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to inform my students.
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"Guess what, guys?
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I've been asked to give a TED Talk."
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The reaction wasn't one I quite expected.
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The whole room went silent.
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"A TED Talk? You mean, like the one
you made us watch on grit?
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Or the one with the scientist that did
this really awesome thing with robots?"
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Muhammad asked.
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"Yes, just like that."
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"But Coach, those people
are really important and smart."
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(Laughter)
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"I know that."
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"But Coach, why are you speaking?
You hate public speaking."
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"I do," I admitted,
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"But it's important that I speak about us,
that I speak about your journeys,
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about my journey.
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People need to know."
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The students at the all-refugee
school that I founded
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decided to end with some
words of encouragement.
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"Cool! It better be good, Coach."
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(Laughter)
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There are 65.3 million people
who have been forcibly displaced
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from their homes because
of war or persecution.
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The largest number,
11 million, are from Syria.
-
33,952 people flee their homes daily.
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The vast majority remain in refugee camps,
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whose conditions cannot be defined
as humane under anyone's definition.
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We are participating
in the degradation of humans.
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Never have we had numbers this high.
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This is the highest number
of refugees since World War II.
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Now, let me tell you why this issue
is so important to me.
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I am an Arab. I am an immigrant.
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I am a Muslim.
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I've also spent the last 12 years
of my life working with refugees.
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Oh -- and I'm also gay.
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It makes me really popular these days.
-
(Laughter)
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But I am the daughter of a refugee.
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My grandmother fled Syria in 1964
during the first Assad regime.
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She was three months pregnant
when she packed up a suitcase,
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piled in her five children
and drove to neighboring Jordan,
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not knowing what the future held
for her and her family.
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My grandfather decided to stay,
not believing it was that bad.
-
He followed her a month later,
after his brothers were tortured
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and his factory was taken over
by the government.
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They rebuilt their lives
starting from scratch
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and eventually became independently
wealthy Jordanian citizens.
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I was born in Jordan 11 years later.
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It was really important to my grandmother
for us to know our history
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and our journey.
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I was eight years old when she took me
to visit my first refugee camp.
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I didn't understand why.
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I didn't know why
it was so important to her
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for us to go.
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I remember walking into the camp
holding her hand,
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and her saying, "Go play with the kids,"
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while she visited
with the women in the camp.
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I didn't want to.
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These kids weren't like me.
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They were poor. They lived in a camp.
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I refused.
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She knelt down beside me
and firmly said, "Go.
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And don't come back until you've played.
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Don't ever think people are beneath you
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or that you have nothing
to learn from others."
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I reluctantly went.
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I never wanted to disappoint
my grandmother.
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I returned a few hours later,
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having spent some time playing soccer
with the kids in the camp.
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We walked out of the camp,
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and I was excitedly telling her
what a great time I had
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and how fantastic the kids were.
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"Haram!" I said in Arabic. "Poor them."
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"Haram on us," she said,
using the word's different meaning,
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that we were sinning.
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"Don't feel sorry for them;
believe in them."
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It wasn't until I left my country
of origin for the United States
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that I realized the impact of her words.
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After my college graduation, I applied for
and was granted political asylum,
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based on being a member of a social group.
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Some people may not realize this,
-
but you can still get the death penalty
in some countries for being gay.
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I had to give up my Jordanian citizenship.
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That was the hardest decision
I've ever had to make,
-
but I had no other choice.
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The point is,
-
when you find yourself choosing
between home and survival,
-
the question "Where are you from?"
becomes very loaded.
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A Syrian woman who I recently met
at a refugee camp in Greece
-
articulated it best,
-
when she recalled the exact moment
she realized she had to flee Aleppo.
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"I looked out the window
and there was nothing.
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It was all rubble.
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There were no stores, no streets,
no schools. Everything was gone.
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I had been in my apartment for months,
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listening to bombs drop
and watching people die.
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But I always thought it would get better,
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that no one could force me to leave,
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no one could take my home away from me.
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And I don't know why it was that morning,
but when I looked outside,
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I realized if I didn't leave,
my three young children would die.
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And so we left.
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We left because we had to,
not because we wanted to.
-
There was no choice," she said.
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It's kind of hard to believe
that you belong
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when you don't have a home,
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when your country of origin rejects you
because of fear or persecution,
-
or the city that you grew up in
is completely destroyed.
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I didn't feel like I had a home.
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I was no longer a Jordanian citizen,
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but I wasn't American, either.
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I felt a kind of loneliness
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that is still hard
to put into words today.
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After college, I desperately needed
to find a place to call home.
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I bounced around from state to state
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and eventually ended up in North Carolina.
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Kindhearted people who felt sorry for me
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offered to pay rent
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or buy me a meal, or a suit
for my new interview.
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It just made me feel
more isolated and incapable.
-
It wasn't until I met Miss Sarah,
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a Southern Baptist who took me in
at my lowest and gave me a job,
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that I started to believe in myself.
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Miss Sarah owned a diner
in the mountains of North Carolina.
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I assumed, because
of my privileged upbringing
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and my Seven-Sister education,
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that she would ask me
to manage the restaurant.
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I was wrong.
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I started off washing dishes,
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cleaning toilets and working the grill.
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I was humbled; I was shown
the value of hard work.
-
But most importantly,
I felt valued and embraced.
-
I celebrated Christmas with her family,
-
and she attempted to observe
Ramadan with me.
-
I remember being very nervous
about coming out to her --
-
after all, she was a Southern Baptist.
-
I sat on the couch next to her
-
and I said, "Miss Sarah,
you know that I'm gay."
-
Her response is one
that I will never forget.
-
"That's fine, honey.
Just don't be a slut."
-
(Laughter)
-
(Applause)
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I eventually moved to Atlanta,
still trying to find my home.
-
My journey took a strange turn
three years later,
-
after I met a group of refugee kids
playing soccer outside.
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I'd made a wrong turn
into this apartment complex
-
and I saw these kids
outside playing soccer.
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They were playing barefoot
with a raggedy soccer ball
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and rocks set up as goals.
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I watched them for about an hour,
-
and after that I was smiling.
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The boys reminded me of home.
-
They reminded me of the way
I grew up playing soccer
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in the streets of Jordan,
with my brothers and cousins.
-
I eventually joined their game.
-
They were a little skeptical
about letting me join it,
-
because according to them,
girls don't know how to play.
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But obviously I did.
-
I asked them if they had
ever played on a team.
-
They said they hadn't,
but that they would love to.
-
I gradually won them over,
and we formed our first team.
-
This group of kids would give me
a crash course in refugees, poverty
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and humanity.
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Three brothers from Afghanistan,
Roohullah, Noorullah and Zabiullah,
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played a major role in that.
-
I showed up late to practice one day
to find the field completely deserted.
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I was really worried.
-
My team loved to practice.
-
It wasn't like them to miss practice.
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I got out of my car, and two kids
ran out from behind a dumpster,
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waving their hands frantically.
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"Coach, Rooh got beat up. He got jumped.
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There was blood everywhere."
-
"What do you mean?
What do you mean he got beat up?"
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"These bad kids came
and beat him up, Coach.
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Everybody left. They were all scared."
-
We hopped into my car
and drove over to Rooh's apartment.
-
I knocked on the door, and Noor opened it.
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"Where's Rooh? I need
to talk to him, see if he's OK."
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"He's in his room, Coach.
He's refusing to come out."
-
I knocked on the door.
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"Rooh, come on out. I need to talk to you.
-
I need to see if you're OK
or if we need to go to the hospital."
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He came out.
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He had a big gash on his head, a split lip
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and he was physically shaken.
-
I was looking at him,
-
and I asked the boys
to call for their mom,
-
because I needed to go
to the hospital with him.
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They called for their mom.
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She came out.
-
I had my back turned to her,
and she started screaming in Farsi.
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The boys fell to the ground laughing.
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I was very confused,
-
because there was nothing
funny about this.
-
They explained to me that she said,
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"You told me your coach
was a Muslim and a woman."
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From behind, I didn't appear
to be either to her.
-
(Laughter)
-
"I am Muslim," I said, turning to her.
-
"Ash-hadu al laa ilaaha illallah,"
-
reciting the Muslim declaration of faith.
-
Confused,
-
and perhaps maybe a little bit reassured,
-
she realized that yes,
-
I, this American-acting,
shorts-wearing, non-veiled woman,
-
was indeed a Muslim.
-
Their family had fled the Taliban.
-
Hundreds of people in their village
-
were murdered.
-
Their father was taken in by the Taliban,
-
only to return a few months later,
a shell of the man he once was.
-
The family escaped to Pakistan,
-
and the two older boys,
age eight and 10 at the time,
-
wove rugs for 10 hours a day
to provide for their family.
-
They were so excited when they found out
that they had been approved
-
to resettle in the United States,
-
making them the lucky 0.1 percent
who get to do that.
-
They had hit the jackpot.
-
Their story is not unique.
-
Every refugee family I have worked with
has had some version of this.
-
I work with kids
-
who have seen their mothers raped,
their fathers' fingers sliced off.
-
One kid saw a bullet
put in his grandmother's head,
-
because she refused to let the rebels
take him to be a child soldier.
-
Their journeys are haunting.
-
But what I get to see every day
is hope, resilience, determination,
-
a love of life
-
and appreciation for being able
to rebuild their lives.
-
I was at the boys' apartment one night,
-
when the mom came home
after cleaning 18 hotel rooms in one day.
-
She sat down, and Noor rubbed her feet,
-
saying that he was going to take care
of her once he graduated.
-
She smiled from exhaustion.
-
"God is good. Life is good.
We are lucky to be here."
-
In the last two years, we have seen
an escalating anti-refugee sentiment.
-
It's global.
-
The numbers continue to grow
because we do nothing to prevent it
-
and nothing to stop it.
-
The issue shouldn't be stopping refugees
from coming into our countries.
-
The issue should be
not forcing them to leave their own.
-
(Applause)
-
Sorry.
-
(Applause)
-
How much more suffering,
-
how much more suffering must we take?
-
How many more people need to be
forced out of their homes
-
before we say, "Enough!"?
-
A hundred million?
-
Not only do we shame,
blame and reject them
-
for atrocities that they had
absolutely nothing to do with,
-
we re-traumatize them,
-
when we're supposed to be welcoming
them into our countries.
-
We strip them of their dignity
and treat them like criminals.
-
I had a student in my office
a couple of weeks ago.
-
She's originally from Iraq.
-
She broke down crying.
-
"Why do they hate us?"
-
"Who hates you?"
-
"Everyone; everyone hates us
because we are refugees,
-
because we are Muslim."
-
In the past, I was able
to reassure my students
-
that the majority of the world
does not hate refugees.
-
But this time I couldn't.
-
I couldn't explain to her why someone
tried to rip off her mother's hijab
-
when they were grocery shopping,
-
or why a player on an opposing
team called her a terrorist
-
and told her to go back
where she came from.
-
I couldn't reassure her
-
that her father's ultimate life sacrifice
-
by serving in the United States
military as an interpreter
-
would make her more valued
as an American citizen.
-
We take in so few refugees worldwide.
-
We resettle less than 0.1 percent.
-
That 0.1 percent benefits us
more than them.
-
It dumbfounds me how the word "refugee"
is considered something to be dirty,
-
something to be ashamed of.
-
They have nothing to be ashamed of.
-
We have seen advances
in every aspect of our lives
-
except our humanity.
-
There are 65.3 million people
who have been forced out of their homes
-
because of war --
-
the largest number in history.
-
We are the ones who should be ashamed.
-
Thank you.
-
(Applause)