I Believe in Seeing Everyone’s Humanity!

Growing up in a country with a history of segregation means that I learned early that, as a black person, I wasn’t seen in the same light as my white peers. In the seventh grade, the black children received the white children’s old school, while a new, more modern school was built for white students. As someone who has always questioned what I felt was unjust, I asked my mother why we got an old school and the white kids a new school. My mother told me to be quiet and not ask those kinds of questions, because they were dangerous and could get me killed.

I remember being in school the day that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. My hometown was devastated by the riots and fires, and we lost our grocery store to the violence. There were National Guards patrolling the streets of black communities, just like there are today in Washington, DC, and in Portland. As the jeeps carrying the soldiers passed down our streets, I looked in the eyes of the young black males who were armed and saw that they were as scared of us as we were of them. We stayed absolutely still, as told by our parents, so that nobody would be killed because of a misunderstanding on either side.

I struggled to understand why Dr. King was killed trying to make it so that blacks could have the same rights and services as whites. I realized that as long as there are people who believe in superior and inferior races, instead of in one race, there would be violence, as we see today on the news in the United States. Failing to see each other’s humanity 60 years after the Civil Rights Act passed continues the violence, and it makes the sacrifices of so many people almost in vain.

But I will always live by the principle that all humans are made in God’s image, as the Bible tells me. I live by the principle that everyone is my sister and brother, and that we all struggle in the land of the living to provide for our families, stay healthy, have a good life, and feel we have value and worth. As long as I am treated with respect, I will return that respect and will do as my God expects of me: Love my neighbor as I love myself.

For me, my neighbor is everyone who shares this planet with me right now. When someone returns my smile, I know that we have seen each other’s humanity. If we could multiply that by billions of times, even in a world where politicians seek to be elected by dividing us and insisting we see each other as enemies, love will still win.

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