It wasn't until the decade after 9/11 -- after witnessing firsthand how his party caved to fear-mongering, racial profiling and expansive federal power -- that he joined me in campaigning for candidate Obama. My father is one of millions of brown and black Americans alienated by a Republican Party that has forgotten its own values.

Hearing that a Sikh will pray on the stage of the Republican National Convention warmed my father's heart. But it didn't make him forget. If the Republican Party wants to appeal to people like my father again, it must remember its own soul.