Tell me you don’t notice color (skin or hair or eyes), size, gender, etc. and I’ll say you’re being disingenuous. Tell me men and women are alike, I’ll say stop being ridiculous. (And heavens, why would we want them to be?) We do notice those things and that’s fine. Differences exist, they do matter, and that’s generally good. How boring it would be if we were all the same!
Where we really need to be is the point at which those obvious differences are only some of many characteristics of that person and they don’t, as Martin Luther King said, define the content of their character. If someone asked me how they would identify a friend of a difference race, why would I not mention color as one of the characteristics? Why wouldn’t I be called white? I am (and trying to stay relatively that way in Arizona to avoid possible skin cancer!!)
Let’s stop asking for the impossible and the ridiculous and start thinking about the inward person. We won’t move past all the nonsense going on now (and no, I’m not saying everything is nonsense, so just relax) unless we spend time with people who are different in situations where we can both/all meet as just people and not members of “groups” or “parties”, but people who may have more in common than we thought and talk civilly with each other. Then perhaps we can regain some measure of sanity. It’s easy to scream, blame, call names, and cause destruction. The hard part is actually talking to and listening to people who are different. The hard part is trying to actually do things that will deal with the issues and start helping to solve the problems while realizing it won’t happen overnight.
But it will only happen if we acknowledge that differences are fine and that people are generally just people, people to be treated with civility. Let’s be radical and give it a try.
“We all do better when we work together. Our differences do matter, but our common humanity matters more.”
― Bill Clinton
This, that and the other thing 