I remember after the attack on the World Trade Center, it just came very naturally for me to say to people, do not engage in group blame. Do not go single out people who are Arab-Americans and blame the attack on the World Trade Center on them. Because the people who attacked the World Trade Center, we weren’t even sure exactly who it was then. But the people who attacked the World Trade Center, obviously are vicious criminals of the worst kind. And there isn’t a single group that sits out there that doesn’t have among them vicious criminals of some kind. Every ethnic group, religious group, racial group has some bad, really bad people in that group.

And then the question becomes are you the kind of prejudiced, irrational human being that defines the group based on the bad people in that group, which means you are going to end up hating everybody. Or do you kind of get beyond that and see that, in fact, in every group, most people are decent people who are just trying to do the same thing that you are doing.

I think the experience of New York allows more and more people to see that than any place else. Because we keep bumping into each other all the time. And you keep bumping into people who look different than you do. I mean, you see them all over. They have different outfits and they talk different languages. And they wear different clothes. And they say different things. And that experience, if you’re a person of some degree of common sense and intelligence, that experience opens you up to the feeling that, well, people are basically all the same.

And it’s the greatest strength that we have, the greatest strength that we have as a city is immigration. And keeping ourselves open to people. And we shouldn’t allow what has happened to us in the last three, three and a half months, we shouldn’t allow what has happened to us to stop that in any way at all. We should continue to be open to people.