Heath ዟ
Heath ዟ
Jul 30, 2017 · 2 min read

I’m not perfect.

I’m one of those people you mention being raised in an embarrassingly racist environment and rising above it (not looking for a pat on the back for that, anyone with sense ought to be able to do the very same).

I’ve accepted that love is better than hate and embracing is better than dividing. I may still occasionally eye-roll at something stemming from another culture, but I’m keenly aware I give other people plenty to eye-roll about, myself. Regardless, there’s always love.

I didn’t just find that by myself, either. Some wonderful people set examples for me, people of different colors and cultures. They showed me love and allowed me to return that love. People who were patient with my inquisitiveness and patient with my difficulty in understanding some things*. People who treated me like a human being while I looked very different from them.

I can’t imagine, after that, being able to maintain a wall between what I am and what they are.

This is why we all must be patient with each other and not hate out of ignorance. Ignorance is a natural state that is remedied by learning. Remaining ignorant is a choice, but learning does not always come easy. We need to all be ready to teach with patience, love, and compassion, no matter what our skin color.

Not to get preachy on anyone, but the very point of “love one another” is to show someone else how. If you only show care and compassion to those who first offer it to you, then we neither teach nor learn beyond our own small circles.

Clay, you do exactly that through your writing, and I have so much love and respect for you and what you have to say.


* I could tell you some pretty funny stories about me working at a call center where every one of my coworkers was a black woman. There were questions (often kind of silly questions that had them laughing their asses off) that I felt comfortable asking about for the first time in my life. :)

    Heath ዟ

    Written by

    Heath ዟ

    https://amazon.com/author/heathhouston — What’s sorely missing from our society today is the imminent threat of a righteous ass-kicking.