Photo by Roberto Carlos Roman on Unsplash
We are all people of color.
I have described more than one person I have encountered as a colorful character.
It is always with a smile on my face and a feeling in my heart that my life has been enriched by that person. He or she has made it much more interesting to be alive.
I like black and white movies, television, and pencil drawings, but I want to receive my 3-D world in living color.
Yet, we want to reduce our world to black and white or black, white and brown or "red and yellow, black and white."
WHITE, in the realm of physics is the color of milk/fresh snow. Not very descriptive, but beautiful in contrast with other colors.
BLACK is the very darkest color owing to the absence of or complete absorption of light; opposite of white. Again, contrast adds delight.
While both are beautiful alone, they are seldom seen alone and difficult to perceive when they are.
I never met either color of person.
Our colorfulness is what makes us part of a wonderful human family.
Our varied cultures are given to be gifts that we share with each other.
Our histories, painful and joyful bring color to our music and art as well as to our shared values.
Our homes of ancestral origin are part of that history while not defining us.
We have culture because we are multi-cultural.
Otherwise, we rob ourselves of our wealth.
I have met some dead people who had extreme colors — but those who are alive, no matter how colorful, are neither all or nothing of anything.
I have met many on a continuum as we all are … descendants of common ancestors and cultures. We absorb many colors and lights. That is good.
Any claim to superiority is misinformed and ignorant.
Such thinking has produced pain, suffering, shame, injustice, war, murder, and oppression. There is much pain in our histories because one group vaulted itself above another.
That is also a part of what has shaped us – the overcoming of the pain and the repentance from the offense of inflicting it.
Our uniqueness is good, but so are our commonalities. All enrich what is already rich.
Race, as we define it today, is an allusion designed to separate or to dominate.
Celebrate your own heritage and that of your neighbors.
After all, we are all colorful characters. We are all people of color.
This is a little long, by I loved this family and her voice:
Pastor Tom's Community 
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