Dallas, Texas

Dallas, Texas....

As a Texan, I am still in shock and denial, somewhat, two days after these absolutely horrific and unbelievable events. What the hell is going on? We are killing each other. Why? What possible reason could there be for the deaths in Baton Rouge, St. Paul and Dallas? Because the victims were a different skin color than the perpetrators? O dear God...

Let me tell everyone who I am:

I am a 57 year old white man. I have lived in Austin, Texas for most of my life. I have traveled all over the Western and Southern states. I have been to most of the major urban places in America saving those on the West Coast or the Atlantic seaboard. I saw the World Trade Center in person before they came down. I attended an integrated high school which was 51% hispanic the year I graduated - as was my graduating class. At that time, race was very carefully measured. The schools were integrated by court order while I was in junior high school (now called middle school). It was finalized my freshman year in high school. We experience race riots in my high school (although I did not participate on one side or the other. I thought it was stupid even then).

I have been married twice and helped to raise my second wife's children and their children. I have worked with and for people of all races, genders and sexual orientations. I have never once been uncomfortable doing so based solely on these criteria. They were all just people. There are good people and bad people everywhere. I have been exceedingly fortunate to know and form friendships with people no matter where I go. And I don't even think about whether they are black, or Muslim, or gay. Its not important to who I am. It has no bearing on my world view or my plans for the future. It is my fervent hope that I might have expanded their understanding as much as they expanded mine.

My message in all of these wanderings is that I have never met a person I hated. I have met those I do not wish to be around and will not allow my children to be around. But that has nothing to do with race, religion or sexual orientation. It has to do with their belief system and mine. And these people are rare. Most of the people I meet, work with, go to hockey games with are interested in treating each other like they would want to be treated. You know, just regular people.

And I meet regular people at hockey games, at Home Depot, at mosques, churches and synagogues,at ball parks, city parks and national parks. In office building, municipal buildings and building that are falling down.

So we need to quit giving so much credence to differences and search for way that we are the same. Because, and I truly believe, that we have more in common in a concrete ways than the difference we invent to hate each other for. Black skin isn't a differnce in humanity - its a color. I like colors.

I am especially fond of shades of grey....