Cory Booker on Race in America | Big Think

Cory Booker on Race in America

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Let’s not homogenize a diverse country.

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Cory Booker:

Cory Booker is the junior United States senator from New Jersey. He was born in Washington, D.C., and his parents, who both worked for IBM, later relocated the family to Harrington Park, New Jersey. A star high school athlete, Booker received a football scholarship to Stanford University, where he earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees. He then attended Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar before earning his law degree from Yale University. Booker won a special election to fill the term of the late Senator Frank Lautenberg to become New Jersey’s first African American senator and only the twenty-first person in American history to ascend directly from mayor to senator. Booker lives in Newark’s Central Ward. His book, United: Thoughts on Finding Common Ground and Advancing the Common Good, gives an account of his own political education that have shaped his particular civic vision for America.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Question: Does Barack Obama represent a post-racial age?

Cory Booker: Well, I reject the term post-racial, it kind of scares me in the sense that I never want that to happen to America. Ah, let’s not sanitize, homogenize, deodorize our country, dear God we are not a homogenous country like Norway or Holland, nor do I want us to be, not that there's anything wrong with that, but I want to be America. We are America, because we have strong Italian communities steeped in who they are, Irish communities with the pride of that community, Korean, Mexican, Haitian, Nigerian. We are the United States of America which is the wonderful collection of so many different races, ethnicities and religions and God forbid if we ever get to a point where we “transcend our race.” What makes America so rich, so powerful, so strong is our diversity. And I want to be a person that is who I am fully, I want to be a guy who is from New Jersey, I got my New Jersey pride, blasting my Bruce and my Queen Latifah, and, ah, but I also want to be a guy who is a Christian. I don’t want that should be something I should apologize for and I want to be a black guy, you know, I am African American, that comes with certain culture, from the food I eat to the music I listen to. My father’s Charlie Parker records or, or Earth, Wind, and Fire, all these things that are part of the African American experience and culture. I want luxuriate in them, I want to enjoy them, I want to be proud of my background and heritage and my heritage's contribution to this country, but all those things ultimately are portal for which us to all, if we truly are rooted in who we are, we eventually emerge to a deeper understanding of humanity in more texture or more rich, Understanding our true commonalities as a people. This where I found out what I found out with Schmuley in England. Now, I still never forget we were sitting there in the drunken spectacle of a purim party and the only three people left standing are the rabbi, who has got the biggest tolerance to alcohol is the Mormon, Greg Inan, Michael Benson who was the grandson of the Ezra Benson the head of the Mormon church, this is like the Prince of Mormon is right here, who does not drink and me that the Christian ex-football players who has never had alcohol and three of us who sitting looking at each other and it was a powerful moment where Mike Benson turns to Schmuley, an observant Mormon turns to a orthodox Jew and says, “Being around you and who you are and how fiercely Jewish you are, proud of Jewish you are, you made me a better Mormon” and Schmuley turns to him and says to a to Michael, he said “you know, being around you made me a better Jew” and I turned to both them and I said “Hanging out with you guys has done nothing for my love life.” Ah, but, ah, the reality is that is what the great thing is about America. The more we understand each other the more powerfully, we celebrate our cultures. I think it tighter our binds could be and it greater we bring out the power of humanity. So, let’s not have my generation of Obama’s or Adrian Fenties or Archer Davis’s or Harold Fords, these young African American guys who are coming along. Let’s let them never symbolize the over of the transcendence of race.

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