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Japanese boy, Chinese boy, Filipino boy, Egyptian boy, Arabian boy, I’ve been hearing those comments all my life, and I believe that our true nationality is mankind and color doesn’t make the difference between people. Toastmaster, members, and guests welcome and good evening, tonight I’m going to introduce myself by talking about my crazy way of thinking.

My name is hareth alsaadi, my father is Syrian and my mother is Filipino, and I carry a Filipino passport and for me it’s just papers made by men and it doesn’t identifies me, also work, money, materials, position, certificate, appearance, color, family, achievements doesn’t identifies me, from my perspective what identifies me and most of people is their mind and heart.

I remember one month ago I watched a movie called ( the great Gatsby ) ( who knows the movie ) which I’ve learned from it a great lesson, the story is a man who’s name is Gatsby was a very rich and famous man with a very good looking, he had a very big and beautiful mansion with lots of servants, during his life thousands of people used to attend his parties that were held in his mansion, but unfortunately when he died none of them attended his funeral even his servants, only one attended his funeral, his friend who loved him for his heart and mind not for his materials.

And that’s what I’ve noticed throughout my life, lots of people judge other people by their color or materials, and from my own experience people used to judge me by my color, in some countries people used to call me Arabian terrorist or Muslim terrorist what’s my fault if some Muslims who didn’t understand Islam did terrorist things, and in other countries people called me Mongolian boy which I didn’t know what it meant.

I actually wouldn’t speak a word if im just facing verbal abusement, but Im also facing something called economic inequality which means having less chance to earn money, good job, good university,… etc, and I have an experience on this issue, once I applied for a job opportunity in a bank, I gave them all the requirements including my high gpa certificate, so they gave me an English and math exam and my results in it is 98%, and I also did more than perfect in the interview, but somehow they didn’t accept me, I didn’t know the reason so I went to a friend of mine who works in the same bank, I told him of what happened so he called the HR to know why they didn’t accept me, so they told him the reason is very simple that the bank doesn’t accept Filipinos, but I wasn’t shocked because I got used on that kind of racism. Once albert einestein said nationalism is a childish thing it’s the disease of mankind also Socrates says I’m not an Athenian or a greek, im a citizen of the world and I agree with both of them.

It’s very terrible when we think about the results of nationalism, countries fight each other instead of fighting disease, poverty, natural disasters. At the end of my complicated speech all what I want to say firstly: I’m against identifying people by their materials, positions, certificates, color, etc, secondly: I’m against racism, thirdly I don’t like nationalism because I’m with the saying our true nationality is mankind. However I’ve learned a lesson of not making those things I face an excuse for me not to succeed or not to live happy, I want to end my speech with a quote which says obstacles are put in your way to see if what you want is worth fighting for.