Just Stop It

I am called "white" but my skin isn't white; it's just its usual colour and the same as all humans: flesh toned. There are lots of tones of flesh and they range from very dark to very light. There isn't much you can do about the colour of your skin. You're born with it and you can't help how you were born. Anyone will tell you that. I am just an ordinary person who isn't rich or poor and who has lived an ordinary, not privileged life. I don't hate anyone and other than spats here and there in my life, hold no grudges. I am over eighty. I had to work hard to get an education and find a job in a life's profession that I loved. I grew up in a neighbourhood with all kinds of languages and skin colours and beliefs and no one told me there was a "difference". Certainly not my parents. The people who lived around us were my neighbours; period. As kids, we didn't make differences. We played together and until I was twelve years old and went to live in a city, I didn't know about racism. Or prejudice of any kind. I did when a friend of mine who was in our circle of middle school girls and was jewish, was told that she couldn't participate in a summer camp because she was jewish and the organization had the word of another religion in it. We girls in the group who were all planning to attend the camp together were incensed and in disbelief. We avidly discussed this wrong. We went to the leaders who were organizing the camp and told them that if our friend, Sally, couldn't join the group, we wouldn't either. And furthermore we were going to take up other actions in protest to support our hurt friend. They bent to our demands but we didn't forget this wrong that I am sure Sally never has in her life, either. We also took up reading books and articles about racism and prejudice, discussed it, and became very much aware of the wrongs and hurts that racism creates. It was a shock to me and I talked about it with my family for the first time. They hadn't deliberately avoided the subject. It was so normal to live in a place where everyone was equal, that it didn't come up. But now, I feel, according to some, that being "white" I am part of a problem. It makes me know that I, must be more sensitive to skin colour and make sure that anyone of the same "colour" as me, understands  that treating someone badly who is a different colour  is ignorant and wrong and destructive. I am now old and I haven't experienced any outright racism amongst my friends or colleagues whatever their many colours or beliefs.  I am not able to go to demonstrations at my age but since they are a legal form of protest, I follow them in the media and feel sad about such divisive treatment of our dear fellows on earth. It makes me wonder what we are becoming when we make differences over innocent citizens who are, as we all are, just trying to get on with our lives. Some have  terrible struggles that most of us have not suffered for reasons of colour, but we should never, ever stop to consider how it must feel to endure those trials. I want to remind kindness to those who go about thinking they are superior because they have more money or hold higher positions or who are of some kind of skin tone that they think is better than someone else's. We are all the same. We have one life and one earth and there is plenty of space for us all if we make room for everyone and look after each other. So, to those who think they are better and that others for any reason, aren't, just- stop- it.