08/26/2026
Good evening everyone I hope you're doing well.
I was just finishing up cutting our lawn when I noticed, there were some kids playing basketball. It appeared that there were three ethnic groups represented. And their ethnic background really has nothing to do with this, other than them being together, brought back a memory of an interview that I saw some years back.
I unfortunately do not remember the name of the man being interviewed.
He was a black man and here, that is important.
He was talking about an event that happened in his life back in the 1980s.
He grew up in a mixed neighborhood, they really had a lot of racial bullying there.
And this man that was being interviewed said, "at this time he might have been five or six years old."
In his neighborhood, there was a park with swings, slides, park benches and barbecue pits for families to get together.
He said, he remembers back then, the park was pretty run down and beat up.
He was there with his mom and other family members. There was this older white man sitting on a bench by himself just reading something.
He went up and asked if the old man would allow him to sit with him.
He said the old man put down what he was reading, patted the bench and said, "there is plenty of room."
He said he climbed up on the bench and stared at the old man for a while. Then he asked the old man how come he let him sit with him, " Aren't you worried about the color of my skin?" Apparently he had been bullied a lot because of his color.
His mom came to get him with an apology, the old told her he was fine.
The old man said the most amazing thing to him. He said, "why would I be upset with the color our amazing God painted on your skin?"
"God made you perfect just the way you are."
He said that he told the old man that, most of the white kids picked on him because of his color.
The old man told him that sometimes adults teach kids bad things.
He said that he told the old man, sometimes white adults treated him poorly also.
The old man told him, that he had to be honest, there was a time that some adults had taught him how to act poorly too.
And then over the years he learned that a color does not make a person, their actions and beliefs, make them who they are.
The man being interviewed said from that day on he never looked at any race as a problem, he only identified the person, as a problem.
I remember thinking back to me being a little one back in 1970 or 71.
I was four or five. My grandmother's neighbor had two boys one was Michael the other was Dennis.
Michael was about my age and we played all the time.
Then one day I was told by one of my mom's friends, that black people were bad and I wasn't supposed to like them (real words not used here).
But I still played with him when nobody knew about it. And then one day he was told by one of his mother's boyfriends that he should not play with me because I was white (real words not used here).
Kids don't know that they're not supposed to like somebody because of their color until an adult tells them.
Michael and I argued and fought sometimes, but it was never over each other's color.
We were little boys and that's what little boys do, they play, they rough house and sometimes they fight.
Kids are not born believing that the color of somebody's skin makes them inferior to themselves.
That is an adult trait and we see it at the center sometimes. We do correct it at the center.
Just a thought from my man in the mirror to the person in yours.
Our amazing God painted us all the perfect color. He makes no mistakes and we are perfectly made in his image. God bless have a great night.
