[Applause] you know I've been listening to all the different speakers today and uh I realized I was the only Asian person on today and even today as I'm standing here I was thinking of how many times in my life going into Corporate America and government agencies and educational institutions how often times i' look out in the audience for someone who looked like me how do you know what I'm talking about by raise of hands yeah and I was thinking that when I was growing up by the way my name is is lay mois and uh it means he who writes and my parents took two months to find my name but on the day that I was born they wrote Gary now what I want you to notice is that I didn't laugh but you did because for me it's not funny at all because I often wondered why I think it was because my father when he came to this country he was called Le Hua and his name was changed to Richard because his country couldn't pronounce it I think it was my first dosage of what it was like in a multicultural nation that when I can't pronounce your name or actually what I learned was if it wasn't in English it was not pronounceable unless of course you were French Australian or English it was beautiful the way it sounded and today I think that that's part of what I want to talk about is what I think it would take to change the world I think it's being conscious and noticing that I didn't laugh when you did and maybe even for you to ask me why didn't you laugh what was coming up for you I love my name laymano I hate that name Gary not that I don't think that Gary is a beautiful name but I remember the children laughing at me when I shared them what my Chinese name was and I remembered coming to school with this beautiful box of what we called see you guy which is soy sauce chicken and bakon and L Chang which is steam pork God I'm getting hungry right now and what happened was I remembered bringing it I was only in in the first grade and I remember putting it underneath my chair because and covering it with my clothes because I didn't want anyone to take it from me and then I remembered some child child in the back said ooh what's that horrible smell and then I realized that child in the class was talking about my food underneath my desk and then I started to hide it even more so so no one would see it but in the process I started to think what was wrong about my food I had never thought that it was smelly I had never thought that it didn't smell well I thought it was a beautiful aroma and then when the lunch bell rang I'll never forget this is I took that box and my colored Chopsticks and I threw it in the garbage can I don't think a day goes by that I don't realize even like right now that I didn't throw away just my food I threw away a part of myself I threw away my beautiful Chinese accent I didn't wear any of my Chinese clothing no one asked me ever to speak any words in Chinese to learn and I remember the kids doing this ching chong China men and for the very first time I went home to look at my eyes and I realized that my eyes Eyes For the First Time might not be as beautiful as a white person's eyes no wonder that even in Japan they still have surgery on their eyes who look more like westerners my god what have we lost and today when I'm standing in front of you today my son is in the audience I remember when my son he's adopted from Guatemala his name is waim I remembered he looks very much like my my ex-wife and I she's Dutch and we adopted him because he would look like a a mix between the two of us and so when he went to school preschool they all thought that he was Chinese and they kept thinking how smart he was and he was and they kept us saying how intelligent how quickly he was learning his alphabet and things like this and then one day waim told them that he was not Chinese but rather he was guatamalan and then from that day on they only complimented him on a socer now how did that happen What Was Missing I think that as a Chinese man born in this country born in Oakland California just next door I think that what I started to realize in going to school where I saw none of my teachers were Chinese none of them were hardly people of color at all no administrator absolutely wasn't that I started to realize that being different meant being not white I started to realize all the different ways that I could blend in and then I remembered there was a loss that occurred where suddenly people started saying to me my gosh you speak such good English where did you learn it from so even though my name was Gary and even though I spoke perfect English it was as if I was still a foreigner I think this country has a huge mythology and the mythology is is that our differences are valued I don't think so I think they're celebrated I think that if you really value someone's culture you integrated into your workplaces even in today in our businesses it becomes part of the culture you see I'm much more than Bruce Lee much more than Chinese New Year here I want to let you know today as I stand before you that it's not what I have in common with white people that makes me significant but rather that my differences are beautiful and that they're wonderful and that this ghee that I wear that my people had to cut off and that this beautiful Tibetan shirt that I wear is part of my clothing and not just a costume to be celebrated that I want to tell you that in the way that I move and that I express myself is part of my people and my ancestors when I was listening and watching the film of the young black man who had lost his best friend I had lost my mother because a black man shot my mother five times in the head I came to become a filmmaker because differences drove that young man at our school he was caught gambling a young black man was was caught gambling in the bathrooms at our school and what happened was rather than dealing with young black men in those days they decided simply to transfer him the consequence of that was he screamed and yelled and held on to the door knobs because he kept saying this is my neighborhood this is where my friends are but they simply transferred him because they were scared to work with black boys in those days 15 years later he found his way to my mother's doorway and I remember when he when I found out my mom being shot my father said you see what I told you about black men they're murderers and they're robbers and you can't trust them and what I kept thinking was as long as we keep telling black men that after a while they start to believe that they're part of the problem I strongly believe today as I'm standing in front of you that I wished people would have asked me as a young Chinese child and later on when I became a therapist and filmmaker I wished in my classes my teachers would have asked me a whole set of questions simple ones like when people look at you what do they see what don't they see I wish they could see that inside I had so much to say if only they would look at me instead of waiting for me to raise my hand or interrupt somebody if only they could realize that sometimes I wondered why some people did all the talking and simply interrupted other people and there wasn't always an opportunity for everyone to speak in a room I wonder why they didn't see me the other one is what I wish they would see inside of me that there was so much I noticed in each person and that when I became a teacher I told my students it's not that you can't learn it's just that we haven't figured out a way to teach you I looked at every child on the first day that I taught I wanted to go every single child and no matter what they were wearing I'd always walk them and say oh I love your tenis Sho that's a badass tattoo tell me more about it or those earrings or whatever it might be I didn't eat with the teachers I ate out at lunch because I wanted to see the children in their own worlds and what they were like and what I want to tell you is that Jesse Jackson's dead wrong the most segregated time in America is not on Sunday it's at lunchtime in every one of our schools schools in this country I want to tell you that the issues that we have with this President is not because of his policies but because he's black that we say no to this black man with policies that he even duplicates of the Republicans because he is black and I'm wondering who in this country is ever going to finally say that that who in this country is finally going to say that no it is not the opportunity for everyone none of your Muslim Chinese gay black disabilities poor the odds of your becoming the president of the United States are almost zero you see the truth of it is we celebrate our differences but we don't practice them we don't use them in everyday life we're more multi- holiday than we are Multicultural so where what happens what happens to this next Generation when they discover and take on our racist M and our stereotypes I remember I was in Harlem and there was a group of I was working with about 600 high school students and I said I'd like you to tell the truth of how you feel about race and finally one Asian boy from uh a student from was born in Hong Kong came down he said okay I'll tell you the truth I'm scared of going to Harlem I hear that they rob you and they cheat you and the food's really bad and you know you never want to go there and then I asked the students to please raise your hand how many have heard of Harlem in that way and all these students raised their hands and here they were all sitting together but not together just a lot like today you're all sitting together but whether or not you say hello or talk to each other that's a whole another thing isn't it in fact for people you don't even know you're probably at least one seat away from them anyway and so what happened was I was standing there thinking well what shall I do here all of my life I've heard about Harlem too how do I convince this young Chinese boy and all these other students and so something came to me and so I said who lives in Harlem and all these black students raised their hands and I said come on down and what I want you to do is I want you to tell this group what do you love about Harlem and then they started to share one by one the beautiful smells and the foods and their uncles and aunts who had shops there and the Beautiful music of Harlem and the art and the grandfathers and the grandparents who lived there and the long history that it was absolutely beautiful and in the evenings it just came alive and then one Asian student raised his hand and said could you show me that Harlem and then that student say says come on over here and then another student raised his hand and pretty soon almost the entire audience raised their hands could you show me that Harlem you see that's exactly what it's going to take we're going to have to walk through our fears to see another world we're going to have to take a chance to get to know another person's life we saw a film today of a young black man who lost his best friend and I was so touched as I was listening to him out in the hallway we were talking but it's not enough to Simply Be Touched that loss will be with him for the rest of his life and what I want to tell him as I did when I was in the hallway was that there's nothing wrong with you there's something our society that tells young black men and people of color that they're not worth it that we choose to be poor that we choose minimum wage but I strongly believe that unless we start to create communities taking care of each other reaching out we have enough money in this country that we spend on Wars that we could take care of our communities in closing what I'd like to do is to share with this with you it was a story that I remember quite well when I finished high school and I graduated as the president of Oakland High and one of my best friends said to me Mah why don't you come on home with me and he was black and I went cuz my father told me never to go into a black neighborhood and I said okay so we kind of dragged I dragged my feet along and as we were dragging because when want catch up with me and I said okay Donald okay but I was really scared out of my mind of what might happened to me and as we were walking along what I realized to Don what I said was you know Don I know this neighborhood and as we got closer I said I grew up in this neighborhood in fact this is the same block that I was born in and Don said wow what a coincidence and then we started to walk up to his house and guess what the house that he lived in was the house that I was born in and I looked at Don with tears in my eyes and I said you know Don you were inviting me into your home where you were never welcomed and I was told never to bring you home and what I'd like to do is to tell you this today that perhaps that is the secret to changing the world that each and every one of us has to take the time to walk each other home I thank you