“Miss Emily, your skin is lighter than mine,” a young African-American girl told my blonde-haired, blue-eyed best friend during camp last summer. The thought that this girl had no pre-conceived notions, no interpretation of differences based on skin color and that she was raised without racial prejudices touched me. It gave me hope.

As a society, we have a lazy tendency to package complex entities into small superficial categories, complete with a neat label. Our simplicity is embarrassing. The tendency to determine a person’s value based on “the package” is disgraceful and yet we continue to do it.

The difficult parts have been done for us; the Civil War, the civil rights movement all hold as examples. People died to get us this far and now it is just remaining stagnant. The quest was for equality and true unity, not compensation for losses, and not insincere acceptance.

It is in our hands now- we’re the educated, the young, the ones with the ability to make it happen.

Each and every one of us comes from a variety of backgrounds and histories that have impacted the people we have become. While it is important to embrace one’s heritage, it also is important to let go a little and embrace others.

Our differences should not be based on skin color, hair color, eye color or body types._

No two people are exactly the same in any way.People’s differences need to be accepted without any prejudicial conclusions reached based on appearance.

We should honor our heritages and our ancestry.That can be done through education and through pride. But pride is not hate and pride does not need to come in the form of hierarchy. No lineage is any better than anyone else’s.

We all have a story to tell, we all have adapted through life experiences. We should be open-minded and take the time to learn from other people without making premature assumptions.

Right now, our campus is letting a combination of six letters divide it. A single word, one inappropriately powerful word, is tearing us apart. This is something to learn from. The agony that word has the power to cause, now as it did years ago, should serve as an example that something needs to be done for us to progress.

We need to learn to love, and even dislike if deemed necessary, people for who they are inside.

Words used to degrade an entire race of people should not be thrown around out ofhumor, hostility or because they can conveniently precede lyrics about being gangsta and pulling “triggaz;” regardless of who is saying them. Why perpetuate a time of disrespect, a time of poor judgment, that caused pain and suffering for innumerable amounts of people?

Any words known to be offensive or behaviors intended to intimidate entire cultures, should be left behind.

We need to learn from history before it repeats itself.

These divisions are ridiculous and shameful displays of close-mindedness.

In a society so dedicated to progress, this resistance to change, even with the promise of a better future, is just perplexing to me. We’re people-nothing more, nothing less.

It is well past time to embrace love and respect for everyone we share this life with. One day, skin color won’t determine first impressions for any child.