I don’t know who took this picture. I admit that I’m stealing it from some web site or other. But, it is such an important picture that I just had to share it.
When I was growing up in Virginia, the worst insult was to be called a “n—-r lover.” Moving to Virginia from Hawaii at the end of the third grade, this didn’t bother me as much as confuse me. Why would it matter who you liked? But, that was the state of thinking in Northern Virginia in the early 1960s.
I don’t know if the household in which I grew up was filled with more prejudice than normal, but we used to continually hear insults based on racial and national stereotypes. Luckily, these remarks didn’t sink in but rather helped me to develop the opposite point of view.
I believe in what the Declaration of Independence says: “All [people] are created equal.” People are people. We all have the same red blood. No one is better or worse because of their race, color, country of origin, the gender of the person who they love, the god they believe in, or for any other reason. We are better or worse people because of the things we do to other people.
I remember being very young, just learning the ways of the world, and thinking what a thing it was to be born both white and in the U.S. Now, I think in the next life I think I would prefer to come back as a Brazilian. From those I’ve met and from my time in Brazil, it doesn’t seem to matter to them what race a person is or what their background is. They seem to accept everyone with an abundance of tolerance. Oh, that the world could learn from the Brazilians.
The healing of the effects of slavery and discrimination is what I see in the photo above. The lives of the young man at the top of the photo and the other in the bottom left have been changed forever.
¡Basta a la discriminacion contra las pesonas diferentes! We need an end to the discrimination against others simply because they are different!
Recent Comments