Born: segregation Lifetime: integration Future: appreciation
Dan Ax,
Noblesville, IN.
Perceptions Equal Thoughts Equal Future Actions
Charles,
Houston, TX
Change your perceptions, You change your thinking, You change your thinking, You change your actions, You change your action, You change future..😉
Learn from History, Change the Future
Jerry,
Leonardtown, MD
Embrace the good and bad about our Country so we can make it a more perfect Union.
My husband calls me future girl.
Jennifer McCadney
Bethesda, MD
Growing up as a kid with a black dad and white mom in the late 70s and early 80s — in what was then a non-diverse industrial town — I struggled a lot with racism and my own racial identity. I felt strangely uncomfortable in my own skin and fought, on both instinct and principle, against the senseless labels I felt society trying to impose. When I left my hometown for college in Washington, D.C., which is a sort of multicultural mecca, things dramatically changed. I felt liberated. I blended in, as opposed to standing out. I was just one of many shades of brown. When I traveled overseas, some assumed I was either a local or from the local indigenous population, as the case may be. People seemed to gravitate toward and were curious about my racial ambiguity, but not in a racist way. It took time, but I eventually became comfortable being me, and for the first time, feel distinct pride in being a person of mixed-race. Cab drivers commonly ask me where I am from, later explaining that I looked like someone from their country – whether it be India, Pakistan, Ethiopia, Egypt, Palestine, Iran, Greece, Turkey, Brazil, or the Dominican Republic, to name a few. “I’m from Pittsburgh,” is my usual response. My husband, who is Jewish, tells me I should say I’m from the future. But I think perhaps our kids will have a better chance pulling that off.
We have a future you see
Cash’e Chapman,
Philadelphia, PA.
Grow like the fields surrounding us.
Kazandra Vanessa Trejo,
Bowling Green, KY.
I was born in beautiful Los Angeles, California. A state full of fields and Latino immigrants who have labored their lives away to prove a better future for their children. To be a Mexican-American that is aspiring to obtain a degree from a university makes me feel like the fields that grow.
Cafe con leche; side of bagel
Raquel Diaz,
Miami, FL.
I’ve used this protocol in workshops before and it was quite reflective to see that I identify with being Cuban (cafe con leche) American (side of bagel). I am proud of my Cuban parents leaving behind everything to give us a better future in America. I love being Cuban American!!!
To boldly go…guess the rest
Blair Brown,
Baltimore, MD.
“To boldly go where no one has gone before.” These words have defined the human experience long before they were ever spoken aloud or put down on paper.
I am neither interested in,nor feel the need to rehash our past in this country. Frankly what I do know is much more than I care to remember. I am more interested in moving forward into the future. Into the unknown.
Unfortunately,for us all,there are those of us in this country-on both sides-who are unwilling or unable to let go of the divisions between us despite the face that those divisions are merely on the surface. They seem content to raise the spectres of the past,uncomfortable with the idea of confronting the hard questions of the future and the potentially wonderful and awesome possibilities over the next horizons. Of seeing what’s beyond ourselves and into the new frontiers. both here and beyond our world.
Furthermore there are those who are not only determined to hold us back,but seek to regress us to a time before freedom was a right of all sentient beings and was instead the province of a chosen few,the elite who actively seek to have their every conscious decision made for them by petty and brutal tyrants whose unquestioned power would check-if not halt altogether-every human endeavor which would continue our spiritual and physical evolution and have us do nothing but sing the praises of the Slavemaster day and night for all eternity. Worse yet,these pitiful….idiots….seek not lonely to deepen preexsisting divides but to create new ones to further their need for continued ignorance amongst the masses who would otherwise see their lies for what they were and rise up against them.
Only when we are willing to do this,will these hideous divisions continue to impede our growth as a people,a species and as a civilization
It is my fervent hope that one day all the flags of the world-from the U.S. Flag to the Rainbow will one day be hauled down-because we don’t need those flags anymore-because will all have choosen of our own free will,to unite under a new banner,one tha will one day encompass the whole Universe.
White with beautiful mixed race granddaughters
L D, Fremont,
CA.
My wife and I are white. We have 3 granddaughters – two mixed white/Asian and one mixed white/black. This is the future of America. I can’t be more proud of my children, their spouses, and my grandchildren.
I’m proud of my immigrant parents!
Priscilla A Contreras,
Garden Grove, CA.
My parents came to the United States to create a better future for themselves and their children. They are the most honest and humble people I know. I will always be proud of them and stand against those who believe immigrants are the problem.
Race: no reason to be afraid.
Sam Kadish,
Newton, MA.
Race is incredibly important to our history. It should be a sidebar in our future. America is the great melting pot; too many people have stopped being proud of that. Race should add color to life; it should add life to culture. America will eventually fail if race remains the first way we judge others. The reality we live in, need not be the reality for our grandchildren. Our personalities, charity, economic realities, heritage and abilities should define us, not the color of our skin. We should be able to joke about each other’s races without fearing deep insult. If brown people have taken over half the businesses on Main Street, it should be an observation: I’m sad that bob’s barbershop is gone but you are happy about the great burrito joint next door. It need not make any body nervous that more names on this years baseball cards are latino. We are changing; get over it.
I feel uncertain about the future
Cara Rose,
San Jose, CA.
I’m White. Formerly, I was Mixed; Portuguese and British/German. I only became White when the US census bureau declared the Portuguese a White race. I don’t know how to feel about losing a part of my racial heritage that has been swept into a generic term that doesn’t seem to mean very much. Especially since I still get asked “Where are you from?” Slowly and loudly as if they expect I don’t speak English. I know they are not asking where in California am I from. And they never seem to believe me when I say I’m a native of Granada Hills, which is where I was born and is on my birth certificate. What they mean is, what country am I from since I obviously can’t be American because I don’t look White. I look racially ambiguous. I have been mistaken for every race except black. So what does it mean to be White in a culture that often doesn’t view you as White? And where Whites are losing their status anyway. I have no answer for this.
Kindergartner fearing my future interracial marriage
Christopher Hollowell
Hornell, NY
I am now a 29 year old white homosexual man living in Brooklyn NY but growing up in a small town in Western NY I distinctly remember ruminating in church over the differences between my family and myself. My most vivid memory was the thought “I wonder how everyone will react when I bring a black person home” These differences still affect my family and my relationship today but it has evolved.
Kris Bailar,My family is of mixed cultures
Debra Heiberg,
San Antonio, TX.
I want to see a world where there is not so much judgement
From South Africa but not black?
Stefan Svicevic,
Lawton, OK.
I recently came to study in the United States and I am from South Africa. Since being here a lot of people have picked up on my accent and asked where am I from and I’d say South Africa and 9 times out of ten the next question would be how come you’re not black or that I am talking rubbish. This makes me question peoples understanding of the world that we live in and how they automatically assume that there are only black people living in South Africa and this is a bit irritating because we live in a world where we are not cut out of from the internet or news.
Being white in South Africa has no privilege as one would think, the whites are actually the minority and mostly blamed on because of the past. It is a rough place to be because people want to make it seem that the white people are responsible for everything bad that’s happened to the country and I personally love the place but it has forced me to move out and seek a better future for myself.
