“My feeling is that labels are for canned food… I am what I am – and I know what I am.” Michael Stipe
It is true! No-one should be defined primarily as Black or White or Asian or Hispanic or Latino or Muslim or Catholic. And to take it one step further we shouldn’t be short, fat, overweight, skinny … you get the point.
Why? Simply put, we are all just PEOPLE moving out together on this journey called life. The tint of our skin along with many of the other labels that exist in our society should be totally irrelevant.
I am proud to be who I am and it has nothing to do with the colour of my skin. I have lived and I have fought, I have seen good times and bad times (sprinkled with a few very ugly times in between), I have been on the top of the circle of life and at the bottom. I am a woman. I am a mom. I am a daughter and friend. I am an aunt and teacher. Best of all, I am awesomely fantabulously beautiful. But that’s just me … do you know what or who YOU are?
While you think on that question here’s a bit of advice: let’s try to forget the labels and the stereotyping and the profiling … please! Because while someone is focusing on your ‘blackness’ or ‘whiteness’ remember that what they should in reality be doing is trying to see the real you on the inside – where everyone’s blood is the same i.e. RED.
“The answer is, who you are cannot be defined through thinking or mental labels or definitions, because it’s beyond that. It is the very sense of being, or presence, that is there when you become conscious of the present moment. In essence, you and what we call the present moment are, at the deepest level, one.” Eckhart Tolle
Gale Weithers 
Very well spoken my dear fellow blogger 🙂
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Thank you dear Lora!
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This a good video Gale, thanks for sharing it. I went to a very multi-racial school and we were just our names, we didn’t have racial or sexual equality laws then. We gave ourselves labels when we were trying to explain ourselves, we didn’t give them to others. I feel it is the emphasis people have on labels that’s the thing. Labels should be just like brunette, blonde, redhead – they are just labels, they do not define who we are. I wrote about my school reunion: https://southamptonoldlady.wordpress.com/2015/09/14/reunion-2015/
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Great article on your reunion; found it to be quite interesting along with the pics and have to agree with you about giving ourselves labels – never even thought of it from that perspective. Thanks !
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People in the UK seem to be frighten to talk about the subject in case they offend – but unless there is conversation there is no understanding. It is so good that you posted that video – look forward to reading what, and if, others say. Thank you Gale.
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It’s so easy to assume what someone is really like and then give them a total – both of which can be totally wrong! Our skin colour means nothing except to confirm our pigmentation. Being black doesn’t make you a criminal and being white doesn’t make you a saint. Maybe if we did indeed talk to each other more (like honestly deep-down had a heart-to-heart conversation) things would be different. Thanks for commenting; hugs!
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hugs!
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Thanks and more hugs to you too!
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