Citation Remarks by Vice President Joe Biden on February 17, 2015, via C-SPAN
VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: I want to make it clear, though, I’m not suggesting to the press or any of our guests that I think America has all the answers here. We just have a lot more experience. By that I mean we are a nation of immigrants, that's who we are. That is not hyperbole. We talk, we teach our kids we're a melting pot. The God's truth is, we are a polyglot, we are a melting pot. It is the ultimate source of our strength, it is the ultimate source of who we are, what we've become. And it started all the way back in the late 1700s, there's been a constant, unrelenting stream of immigration. Not in little trickles, but in large numbers.
I had an opportunity to be in Singapore with Lee Kuan Yew, the former president who is now 93 years old. And I was talking to him on my way to China, to meet with President Xi and I said — he's known as sort of the Henry Kissinger of Asia, for real, a very wise man. And I said to him, I said, “What are the Chinese doing now?” And he thought — because we were talking about how rapidly a man I’ve come to know relatively well, President Xi, has consolidated power.
And he said to me — and he speaks perfect English — he said, “They're in America looking for the buried black box.” And I looked at him just like you're looking at me — like, “What's he talking about?”
He said, “They're looking for that secret that allows America to constantly be able to remake itself, unlike any other country in the world.”
And I said, “I can presume to tell you what's in that black box, Mr. President. I’m old enough now.” I said, “One is, that there is in America, there's an overwhelming skepticism for orthodoxy.” From the time a child, whether they're naturalized or they're native-born, they — think about it, a child never gets criticized in our education system for challenging orthodoxy, for challenging the status quo. I would argue it's unlike any other large country in the world.
I said, “There's a second thing in that black box — an unrelenting stream of immigration, nonstop, nonstop.” Folks like me who are Caucasian, of European descent, for the first time in 2017 we'll be in an absolute minority in the United States of America, absolute minority. Fewer than 50% of the people in America from then and on will be white European stock. That's not a bad thing, that's a source of our strength.
And so, we have been — we haven't always gotten it right. I don't want to — I don't want to suggest we have all the answers. But we have a lot of experience of integrating communities into the American system, the American Dream.
A generation from now, as I said, things will be changed even more. It's not merely that we're a melting pot, but we're proud to be a melting pot. And with that, we've made a lot of mistakes, but we've also made a lot of progress. And you know, we've learned a lot of hard lessons.
But the most important lesson we've learned, we don't always practice it, is that inclusion counts. Let me say that again — inclusion counts. Inclusion counts. Being brought in and made a part of the community — whether as my Irish ancestors with signs, “No Irish need apply,” and the anti-Catholic movement of the Know-Nothings in the late 1800s, straight through to how some respond today to the number of folks in the United States of America that are Hispanic in background.
It’s always — we've always ultimately overcome it. But it's always been about inclusion, being a part of the whole. As I said, we still have problems, but I’m proud of the American record on cultural and economic integration of not only our Muslim communities but African communities, Asian communities, Hispanic communities. And the wave still continues. It's not going to stop, nor should we want it to stop. As a matter of fact, it’s one of the things I think we can be most proud of.