Reply #22: "These people are all a part of me...."

[Skidmore]

For me it is a white family of Scotch-Irish, German, and Dutch lineage and dirt poor to boot after the Depression. Some lines in my family held slaves in the South before the Civil War and other lines fought with the Union Army. Some were Quakers and teachers. My father was a man of strong prejudice, and my mother was a woman who adopted stray people of all hues in our town. I have been married to a Muslim from the Middle East and a Methodist preacher's son from the West Indies. We practice bits of several religions and not one in particular. We are black, brown, and white and struggle with the prejudices from our birth families and society at large every day of our lives--but we at least have undertaken the struggle. We embrace and love those among us who agree with us and those who do not. We cannot turn our backs on each other for, when all is said and done, each other is all we have.