What we should celebrate more than diversity is what we do with it. How do we bring everyone in the tent and create something together? In a twenty-first century way that activates our true potential, we all need to become sworn-again.

Our commitment should be to leave our environment in better shape than when we found it, our nation's fiscal house in better order, our public infrastructure in better repair, and our people better educated and healthier. To indulge in immediate gratification and exploitation is an insult to previous generations, who sacrificed for us, and thievery from the next generation, who depend on our virtue.

Throughout this country's history there have of course been systematic efforts to create an official underclass.

Great numbers of Asian Americans do not fit the model minority or 'tiger family' stereotypes, living instead in multigenerational poverty far from the mainstream.

Imagine filling a college with the first 1,000 students to get perfect SATs. Whatever the racial composition of that class would be, the notion seems absurd because we know that college in America is supposed to be about creating citizens and leaders in a diverse nation.

As it stands now, those of us who are lucky enough to be citizens by birth don't have to do much. Very little is asked of us.

Much of our national debate proceeds as if China and America were locked in a zero-sum game in which one's loss is precisely the other's gain.