Levar Burton

Image Source: https://abc7chicago.com/readingrainbow-reading-rainbow-kickstarter-levar-burton/83485/

I, like so many others in my generation, grew up being read to by Levar Burton. For many of us Levar was who introduced us to reading. I grew up in a home where books weren't around. When you grow up in poverty, books rank very low on the list of essentials. When you grow up in an abusive and neglectful home, no one cares enough to give you anything, let alone a book. Levar burton was somewhat of a parental figure / friend / teacher to me and so many others. Levar introduced me to books and planted a seed of curiosity and a thirst for knowledge within my soul. He is part of the reason I am who I am today writing this post. Even today he continues to read to us on his podcast. Levar if you ever read this, on behalf of everyone who's life you touched, we would like to thank you from the bottom of our hearts for being a light of positivity and Love in this world. You made a dark and terrifying childhood seem a little less dark. You were our friend when we didn't have any. Thank you and We Love you!

What I'm going to discuss in the rest of the post is in no way a reflection of Levar Burton. What I'm going to discuss is simply my experience and perspective. 

The day I discovered that Levar Burton was "black" and that there are "black" people was the day I found out about roots, which happened sometime in my preteen years. Before that time, he was just my friend Levar Burton. I had been taught that there were "black" people, I had been taught about people of color and about slavery, but I had never seen anyone "black" in my life. I went to school at a diverse elementary school close to the city, there were children of all backgrounds and ethnicities that went there. Here's the thing, as a child, I never once thought of anyone as "black" or "brown" or "yellow". Everyone was just a person to me; I hadn't yet seen the illusion of color. It wasn't until I found out that Levar burton played a role in a television series about slavery that all of a sudden everything I had been taught about "black" people, slavery, and separation came together. All of a sudden, I could see that there were black people and that they were "different". 

Even though I could see what everyone was talking about now and I finally understood what "black" people were I still knew "they" were humans and didn't deserve to be treated any differently. Yet the world I grew up in was vastly different. "Black" people are treated differently in this world, in fact most all people of color are. When a human becomes a label such as "black" it's a way of making "them" less human, it's a way of suppressing "them". When we apply labels, we automatically separate whatever is being labeled from ourselves in our mind on a subconscious level. "Men" are different from "women", "black" are different from "white", "rich" are different from "poor". Separation leads to bias, bias leads to hierarchy, hierarchy leads to war, and war leads to death. If we would wake up and realize that we are all human and even though we all come in different shapes and sizes, we are all the same. 

We can't pretend that there isn't racism in this world. There is most definitely racism in this world. Some of us ignore it, some of us lie, and some of us are actually completely ignorant to the fact that there is racism. As long as there is "black" and "white" or any other color, there will always be racism. Those are the facts; you can only have racism if there are races. HUMAN should be all that matters, nothing more, nothing less. This applies to every single label that is put onto anything in this world, when you label something, it becomes separate in your mind. The label usually becomes less than or better than, very rarely is it ever viewed as equal to.

Adult / child, fat / thin, smart / stupid, white / black, man / woman, good / evil, democrat / republican, gay / straight, religious / secular, sinner / saint, rich / poor, sane / insane, strong / week, legal / illegal, right / wrong, friend / enemy, yin / yang

We are all God's children, we are all part of the same universe, we are all one species, we are all the human... but we sure don't act like it. I Love You and Peace Be With You!

“So then, the relationship of self to “other” is the complete realization that loving yourself is impossible without loving everything defined as “other” than yourself.”

― Alan W. Watts