“Diversity is about all of us, and about us having to figure out how to walk through this world together.”

– Jacqueline Woodson

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I know there are many people around today who greatly fear diversity. Many of that group still live where they were born. They have been almost exclusively taught by their elders what is right and wrong. But, in the first 25 years of this new century the world outside their clan’s doors has changed dramatically.

What their elders taught them about people of color has been turned on its ear. It’s now ok for a “Negro” man to kiss a “White” woman without fear of being lynched. Things have changed so much, people of different races are marrying each other now!

I grew up in this pre-enlightenment environment; I even saw cross burnings outside my small hometown in the 1960s. People who were “different” were frequently sent to special institutions to live out their lives. They didn’t belong among the rest of us.

When I went to college in 1965, I went into a world I never imagined. It was full of those people who I was taught to fear. But I came to find out that they were pretty much the same as everyone else. Nothing to fear there. Those enlightenment lessons continue to be learned even today. I can’t say I am comfortable with everything I have been exposed to in recent years, but I have learned

“To Live And Let Live”.

It is just not my place to tell others how to live their lives.