We Are All Colored People and All of Our Lives Matter Equally

We are all colored people and all of our lives matter equally. Yes, some of us are lighter than others and some of us are darker than others. But then, all of us on this planet are probably lighter than someone else, and likely darker than someone else. Get over it. It’s not your fault, nor your fortune you were born in the skin you’re in. Accept yourself!

Americans come in all sorts of colors and shades of on color or another. They run from super dark (think equatorial Africa) to dark (think Bangladeshi, Caribbean, etc.) to brown (think Arab, North African, or Hispanic) light brown or olive (think Asia) to pale (think Western Europe and Nordic countries). The people palette of the United States includes them all, and as our country grows and our multiple cultures cross through marriage and children produced in and out of them, so will the canvas in which they live. Just like the song so often sung in Sunday school classes across America went, “Red or Yellow, Black or White, They’re All Precious in His Sight” No one in America should be viewed as more or less valued based on their skin color or hue. Just as we recognize that not all dark skinned people are from Africa, so must we realize that not all light-skinned people come from England or are tied to a colonial past.

For example, some people would say I’m White. To me, I’m not white. The paper in my printer is white, and if I looked like that, I might want to check my pulse. On the serious side, I am darker than my wife, but lighter than my daughter. Without challenge, both of them would be characterized as white when compared to other ethnic categories here in the U.S. Forget the fact they are from another country and continent, arriving in America this past decade, they would still be considered White. My family and I are not white; we are people of varying shades of color. We are people with color or I guess we could also be called people of color, or maybe even colored people.

Wait — what? Did I just say colored person? Or did I say person of color? And why does such a seemingly innocuous switching of adjective / verb placement matter so much? Because in the U.S. it surely does. In the third decade of the 21st century a person can be threatened to be / fired from their job for saying it one way versus the other. Why does something that sounds seemingly tantamount to saying “colored flowers” instead of “flowers of color” draw such emotion? Why is acceptable to say a “person of color”, but not a colored person?

Now before the impatient reader starts getting their blood pressure up — let’s just say that example is as rhetorical as it is illustrative. Many of us know the difference in those descriptions may be linguistically alike but their denoted differences lie in America’s segregationist past where Whites and Blacks had different water fountains, rest rooms, sleeping cars etc. But let’s recognize that is history and acknowledge focusing on the past won’t move a person forward. Once again, before the reader gets their blood pressure rising, let me say this does not mean history should be forgotten. History is a reference from the past, it is not your future. You are your future.