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the floor. But we'll clean the floor, believe me, we'll clean the floor. I
don't think that we are doomed to sink down into the Babel of alien–
ation between one group and another, that so many people today see as
the fate of America. I think, finally, that when we look at almost any
group of immigrants we see that there is a centripetal force to the
American sensibility that pulls people in. I remember once I was sitting
next to some people from either Iran or Iraq, and they lived in New
Jersey, and they were the grandparents of two teenaged girls who were
sitting behind them. Now, the two grandparents were dressed in formal ,
traditional Muslim clothes, they had gotten a kosher meal - they didn 't
like that word too much, but they ate it - and while they were eating,
behind them were their two equally, I guess, Muslim granddaughters.
Both of them had on extremely tight jeans, tight T-shirts with no
brassieres, and tennis shoes. They both had Walkmans, and they were in
the back moving to the music. Now, that perhaps didn't mean that they
didn't pray five times a day and embrace the invincible truth of Allah ,
but it does show that they also had been pulled into the American
sensibility, into American culture.
I think that what the Italian filmmaker Sergio Leone said about
America is extremely important for all of us to understand. He said that
what American film and entertainment did was to create an international
language because it had to speak across such a greatly complicated
democratic mass, and that was the reason why it not only spoke so well
to all Americans, but spoke so well to people around the world. And I
think that as we come in contact with each other, whatever our back–
grounds are, the charisma of humanity will neutralize most of the
irrational stuff we are beset by at this particular time. I have often heard
people say that our fates are all the result of decisions made in smoke–
filled rooms, that there are unflagging prejudices that will never give in,
but one of the things that always comes to me is the fact that Frederick
Douglass used to give addresses at a time when there was no knowledge
of blood plasma; none of the scientific knowledge we have used to
neutralize most racist ideas was available. Douglass would speak to
people who were rather curious to see what this perhaps half-human
person had to say, and oftentimes by the end of his addresses the entire
room would be abolitionist. This is something that took place over a
hundred and fifty years ago. I don't think that America has lost that
spirit at all, I think that there are storm clouds that appear, but I think
we're going to get through it. And to close out, I have to quote Louis
Armstrong. He said:
Bop bi da, dop di da, dop di bop a do di di di bop bi
bop bi bop bi da
-
that's Louis Armstrong on George Gershwin's "It
Ain't Necessarily So."
