WEBVTT

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Whenever I travel,

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I carry a little metal box
of Altoids mints

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because after a four-hour,
7 AM flight, everyone has bad breath,

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so almost anyone
is willing to take the mint

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from the Muslim on the airplane.

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(Laughter)

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And I know I've been successful
when my neighbor turns and asks,

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"So, what's your name?"

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You see, even if there was
an elephant in the room,

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I'm still the elephant in the room.

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(Cheer) Yeah!

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When an elephant
offers you mints on an airplane,

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I'm fully aware that
it's not always easy to accept,

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so when the courageously curious
do pop the what's-your-name question,

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I try to make it worth their while.

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(Laughter)

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My name is Amal.

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It means 'hope' in Arabic.

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Most days my name is waitress
at my family's Damascus restaurant,

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full-time university student
and then some,

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pre-law, world traveler, 11 countries.

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My name is I've performed poetry
in eight of those countries.

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(Cheers) (Applause)

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International spoken word poet,
unapologetic Muslim woman.

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Syrian, American, hijabi,
activist, social justice advocate.

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My name is writer, teacher,
Colorado-born Mile High baby!

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(Laughter)

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(Applause)

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But at the airport,
my name is random search.

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(Laughter)

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And on the street, it's terrorist,

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sand nigger, raghead, oppressed,

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and on the news, it's ISIS,

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jihadi,

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suspect,

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radical.

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My name is, "Could your Muslim
neighbor be an extremist?"

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My mama, who wears the hijab,
the Islamic headdress,

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is often referred to as
"Go back to you country,"

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but she's from Iowa!

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(Laughter)

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And her nickname is Lisa Pizza.

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(Laughter)

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And it does not take more
than a couple questions

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to figure out that her country
is the Council Bluffs cornfields.

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(Laughter)

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But, how would someone
know this without asking?

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They say the shortest distance
between two people is a story.

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Well, I elaborate on that to say
that the greatest distance you can travel

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in the shortest amount of time,
is by asking someone their name.

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The way we name ourselves
is a reflection of who we are,

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our declarations, family histories,
the things we believe,

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the morals we abide by,
our homes, cultures, transformations.

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Like a Mohammed turned Mo,
or a Lisa Pizza turned Iman.

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And how we name others, and how,
if, we allow others to name themselves

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is a reflection of our own declarations,

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of our courage, and our fear.

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The malleability of a person's story
must be self-determined,

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coming from the lips of the storyteller,

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not the anchorman, not the megaphone,

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not even the scarf on her head
or the melanin in his skin,

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because no one can speak
the names of billions in one breath,

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unless it's in prayer,

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and oftentimes when we generalize,
it isn't because we're praying.

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And when we don't ask someone their name,
we're not asking for their story.

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In the world of mass media
and rampant misinformation,

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it is hard for anyone, including myself,

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to deconstruct all these
terrifying stories that we hear.

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Sometimes, instead of isolating them,
individualizing them,

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we tend to paint a group of people
with a broad brush,

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until suddenly, everyone with a hijab on
is a raghead that needs liberating,

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or everyone with white skin
is a racist cracker,

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or everyone with black skin
is a fatherless nigger,

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or everybody who looks like my father
is going to blow up the airplane,

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or if the killer had a light complexion,
he's just a mentally fragile lone wolf.

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And we come to this point

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where we feel like we don't even need
to ask people their names

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because we already gave it to them.

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In Europe right now,
a monumental name change is taking place

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that has completely transformed
a humanitarian responsibility.

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Countries are deporting refugees,

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but when you watch news coverage,

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these refugees
are being referred to as migrants.

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Because let's face it, deporting migrants
sounds way more reasonable

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than deporting individuals
who have been forced to flee their country

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because of persecution,
war, and violence -

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the United Nations definition of refugee.

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(Applause)

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And in naming these people this way,

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we've attributed to them a choice
instead of a circumstance,

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some economic gain instead
of a desperation to flee a war zone.

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These little ones
are refugees, not migrants.

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I took this photo last year
at a refugee camp

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on the Syrian-Turkish border,
and contrary to popular belief,

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they aren't poisons.

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They're not here to steal our democracy 
or to take over our neighborhoods.

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They're people,

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families who wish that they could go home

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but have had to make
that home somewhere else.

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And we've come to this point,
where the word 'migrant'

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essentially means piles of brown,
foreign-speaking people,

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and we end up forgetting
that there was a point where some people

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would've considered
those who looked like this

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to be migrants as well.

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(Applause)

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Right, though?

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(Applause)

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And it is in this forgetfulness
that we assume,

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monopolize on people's stories,
attribute their race, social class,

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religions, clothing to the names
that we chose for them.

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Terrorism is a fine
modern-day example, unfortunately.

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In the past few years,

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so much violence
has just spread across our country,

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but when you watch the news,
there's always a specification

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as to whether or not
terrorism was involved,

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which I think we all know
means the killer looked like this.

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[Arab dude]

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Which...

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(Laughter)

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He's a babe!

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Which must mean...

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(Laughter)

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Which must mean that the killer,
of course, pledges his allegiance to this.

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[ISIS]

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Right?

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But correct me if I'm wrong, news coverage
does in fact tend to be a little different

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when the terrorist looks like this.

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[Robert Dear, Planned Parenthood Shooter]

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(Applause)

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And it ultimately
has us forgetting that terrorism,

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by definition of terrorism,


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has always come in all shapes

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[Ku Klux Klan]

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and colors.

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[Timothy McVeigh, Oklahoma City Bomber]

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(Cheers) (Applause)

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And what happens when we confine
certain names with certain depictions,

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wrongfully excluding some
and including others,

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we end up caging masses of people
under a name that says 'dangerous,'

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even if they're nowhere near it.

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Like when we say 'thug'
instead of 17-year-old black child.

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[Trayvon Martin]

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When we say 'alien'
instead of 'immigrant.'

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When we say 'lazy poor people'
instead of 'unequal wealth distribution.'

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When we say 'bomb' instead of 'clock.'

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[Ahmed Mohammad, clock inventor]

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(Applause) (Cheers)

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This man's name is Craig Hicks.

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He's often referred to
as a parking dispute,

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but his real name is a man who shot
and killed three Americans in their homes,

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in their heads, execution style
because they were Muslim.

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His name is hate crime.

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Their names are Deah, Yusor, and Razan,

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a 23 year old, 21, and 19.

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Deah and Yusor were just named
husband and wife, newlyweds,

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and the three were known
by their loved ones

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as sons and daughters, brothers,
sisters, students, activists,

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Instagrammers, tax payers, Americans.

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But now, their names
are too young to have been taken,

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their names are rest in peace,
Allah Yerhamo.

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Hicks did not ask them their name.

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He assigned it to them
when he assigned them each a bullet,

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named them a threat to his America,
and as a result, took their lives.

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This is a photo
on Deah and Yusor's wedding day.

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It's so beautiful.

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They were killed
before they could even see this.

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Studies show that during
breaking news coverage,

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the first story is the one
that sticks, even if it isn't true.

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Like during the Paris attacks,

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when there was talk
that refugees were dangerous

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because they found a passport,

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only to later confirm that there were
no Syrians or refugees involved.

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But when we have such
a huge habit of misnaming people,

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it's easy to overlook
these kinds of mistakes.

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And this is exemplary
of what happens in a culture of fear.

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In a society that doesn't ask
one another their names,

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you end up with the mouth of an anchorman

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or the mouth of a gun
doing all the talking.

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On September 11th, 2001,

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I attended a private K-8 Islamic school,

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and within the first hours of the tragedy,

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my school received two bomb threats.

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The word 'terrorist'
was not on my spelling list,

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but all of us kids picked it up
pretty soon after.

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And in naming us terrorists
amidst this mass tragedy

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that affected us as Americans too,

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in the words of Dalia Mogahed,

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we were not just mourners,
but we were suspects as well.

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But, a few months ago,

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me and my very handsome,
white-boy-looking brother named Usama

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were at the museum
buying planetarium tickets,

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and an elderly white man
walked up to me and said,

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"I'm sorry about everything
you must be going through right now.

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I want you to know that not all Americans
believe what these buffoons are saying."

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(Applause)

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"Yeah, he used the word 'buffoons!'"

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(Applause)

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And he said, "I want you to know
that we stand by you."

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Now, had I not been wearing
a little piece of my identity on my head,

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he wouldn't have known to tell me this.

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And even though he didn't ask me
what my name was,

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he instead told me his.

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I have learned from experience
that when someone really wants to know,

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they will be willing to cross
that threshold of fear

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and find out that my name means hope.

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And then, they'll have the courage
to ask the much more important questions

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that probably only I can answer, like,

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"What's that thing on your head?

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Were you forced to wear it?

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Are all Muslims really violent people?

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Does the Quran
really say to kill all of us?

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Can you please tell me
what's up with ISIS?"

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And these questions,
though seemingly uncomfortable,

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are how I know that I have been humanized,

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and are how the courageously curious
know that really,

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I'm only as scary
as the silence fear festers in.

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Upon meeting someone new,
we ask their names.

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We do not assign it to them.

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And with that name, we are given ancestry,

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bloodlines and dialects, books and poems,

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perspectives, wars, struggles,
and survival stories.

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"What's your name?"
is such a short distance to cross,

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but when you ask me, oh, buddy!

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I will take you from Kuala Lumpur
to Barcelona to Beirut.

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We're going to go to Damascus,
to Sydney, to Trinidad and Tobago.

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I will show you Mecca,

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my closet with 70-plus
international scarves,

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the graves of my 31 family members
who've been killed in Syria,

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the coffee shop that I hang out at
and do my homework.

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But we must have the courage
to claim our curiosity,

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to go beyond anything we ever knew,
anything we ever feared.

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But it takes two:

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the elephant who offers the mint

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and the one who takes it.

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(Applause)

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(Cheers)