I took this photo in the Whole Foods in New Orleans, LA, while home in Mississippi - I thought it would make a pleasant fall, Halloween contribution to my Facebook page.
The diversity of the pumpkins is amazing to me - all sizes and shapes and colors. Earlier in my trip I was in a market in Madison, MS. Madison is a place where all the houses and businesses look alike (McDonald's, and Shell are onlyi distinguishable from their red brick and white columns by their logo signs). At that market, which also had a lovely array of pumpkins - some decorated with cute and toothy grins - I noticed that most of the employees were not white.
Most of the shoppers were white.
I noted that to someone shopping with me, someone who taught me about respecting the dignity of all people long before I knew that phrase from the baptismal rite. This someone, an intelligent, caring person said, "I've never noticed that before."
That's how broken we still are as a country, when even thoughtful, respectful human beings pass through everyday life with blinders on at the level of our separations: economic, physical, racial, educational, sexual, etc.
This is why any form of "separate and equal," or worse, intentionally unequal, such as the laws regarding same-sex unions, is such a social evil: we will all be broken by our systems of separation and hate.
I wish we could appreciate the diversity among humans that we enjoy among all the other species of the creation.
Photo and writing: (C) Michael P. Barham, November, 2009.
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