Obama Rejects Discrimination Against Muslim Americans and Urges Faith in Farewell Speech

By Derek Welch --
12 Jan 2017 --

Hope, faith and optimism were heard from Obama in his farewell speech Tuesday night.

President Obama’s farewell speech in his hometown of Chicago was very touching for Americans. The president took the opportunity to remind Americans “We either fall or rise as one.” Obama may have been sending a message to Americans that discrimination against any minority group would lead to disastrous results for the nation. The president clearly believes the ideal American society can never become a reality if certain sections of society are alienated.

Obama Rejects Discrimination Against Muslim Americans and Urges Faith in Farewell Speech[/tweetthis]

Obama’s speech had a generous sprinkling of religious references. In fact, he even said equality wasn’t simply a political privilege, but a gift from “our creator.”

"Change only happens when ordinary people get involved and they get engaged, & they come together to demand it." Barack Obama #ObamaFarewell
— David Ndii (@NdiiDavid) January 11, 2017

“It’s the conviction that we are all created equal, endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights, among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It’s the insistence that these rights, while self-evident, have never been self-executing; that we, the people, through the instrument of our democracy, can form a more perfect union.
This is the great gift our Founders gave us. The freedom to chase our individual dreams through our sweat, toil, and imagination – and the imperative to strive together as well, to achieve a greater good.”

Obama focused particularly on the themes of equality and racial discrimination. The speech was also aimed at instilling a sense of hope and faith in the hearts of the listeners. Obama objectively stated he was against the discrimination of Muslim Americans, clearly sending a message to the President-elect Donald Trump. One of the major reasons Trump won is how his supporters saw his campaign as being hostile towards minorities may have led Obama to deliver a speech that both, reminded Americans about the country’s core principles of equality as well as encouraged them that nothing, or nobody can ever compromise the nation’s ideals.

Saying that he rejected the discrimination of Muslims Americans, Obama believes discrimination cannot be fought against simply by anti-discriminatory laws. He said “laws alone won’t be enough. Hearts must change. If our democracy is to work in this increasingly diverse nation.” He called on the nation to undergo a renewed participation in American democracy and urged Americans to believe in the best of one another.

Distraught his term has come to an end, the gathering broke into a chant of “Four more years.” However, America’s first ever black President reminded them change is something that isn’t dependent on him. Instead, he asked:

“I am asking you to believe. Not in my ability to bring about change – but in yours.
I am asking you to hold fast to that faith written into our founding documents; that idea whispered by slaves and abolitionists; that spirit sung by immigrants and homesteaders and those who marched for justice; that creed reaffirmed by those who planted flags from foreign battlefields to the surface of the moon; a creed at the core of every American whose story is not yet written:
Yes We Can.
Yes We Did.
Yes We Can.”