Racism teaches us that we are different because of the color of our skin. But because racism is stupid, it’s easily tricked.

It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength. We all should know that diversity makes for a rich tapestry, and we must understand that all the threads of the tapestry are equal in value no matter their color; equal in importance no matter their texture.

Racism is taught in our society... it is not automatic.
It is learned behavior toward persons with
dissimilar physical characteristics.

It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.

When we are taught that safety lies always with sameness, then difference, of any kind, will appear as a threat

We want to raise our children so that they can take a sense of pleasure in both their own heritage and the diversity of others.

It’s the people who feel strong and good about themselves inside who are best able to accept outside differences — their own or others‘. We help children develop this ability every time we affirm how special they are to us for being themselves, and how special to us are all the things that make each person different from anyone else.

Racism is when it doesn't count. When they don't count. When one can do anything with them, it doesn't matter what , because they are not people like us. Do you see? Not our kind. When we can make use of them as we please, without losing face, dignity, honor. Without embarrassment, without making a moral judgement - that's it. When we can make them do no matter what degrading work, service, because their opinion of us doesn't count, because it cannot tarnish us. That's what racism is.

My mother delayed my enrollment in the Fascist scouts, the <em>Balilla</em>, as long as possible, firstly because she did not want me to learn how to handle weapons, but also because the meetings that were then held on Sunday mornings (before the Fascist Saturday was instituted) consisted mostly of a Mass in the scouts' chapel. When I had to be enrolled as part of my school duties, she asked that I be excused from the Mass; this was impossible for disciplinary reasons, but my mother saw to it that the chaplain and the commander were aware that I was not a Catholic and that I should not be asked to perform any external acts of devotion in church.

In short, I often found myself in situations different from others, looked on as if I were some strange animal. I do not think this harmed me: one gets used to persisting in one's habits, to finding oneself isolated for good reasons, to putting up with the discomfort that this causes, to finding the right way to hold on to positions which are not shared by the majority.

But above all I grew up tolerant of others' opinions, particularly in the field of religion, remembering how irksome it was to hear myself mocked because I did not follow the majority's beliefs. And at the same time I have remained totally devoid of that taste for anticlericalism which is so common in those who are educated surrounded by religion.

I have insisted on setting down these memories because I see that many non-believing friends let their children have a religious education 'so as not to give them complexes', 'so that they don't feel different from the others.' I believe that this behavior displays a lack of courage which is totally damaging pedagogically. Why should a young child not begin to understand that you can face a small amount of discomfort in order to stay faithful to an idea?

And in any case, who said that young people should not have complexes? Complexes arise through a natural attrition with the reality that surrounds us, and when

A desire for recognition emerges at the same time as a sense of inferiority. A good upbringing should be able to dissolve this sense of inferiority, and as a result the child will not develop an unbalanced need to win at the expense of others.

It is only that people are far more different than is pretended. All over the world men and women are worrying because they cannot develop as they are supposed to develop. Here and there they have the matter out, and it comforts them. Don't fret yourself, Helen. Develop what you have; love your child. I do not love children. I am thankful to have none. I can play with their beauty and charm, but that is all - nothing real, not one scrap of what there ought to be. And others - others go farther still, and move outside humanity altogether. A place, as well as a person, may catch the glow. Don't you see that all this leads to comfort in the end? It is part of the battle against sameness. Differences - eternal differences, planted by God in a single family, so that there may always be colour; sorrow, perhaps, but colour in the daily grey.

Out of difference can come the reinforcement of two important values. One is tolerance and the other is awareness that people who disagree over the things they hold dear really can live together in love and respect.

Whether or not any of us become racists is a choice we make. And we are called to choose again and again where we stand on the issue of racism at different moments in our life.

Often their rage erupts because they believe that all ways of looking that highlight difference subvert the liberal belief in a universal subjectivity (we are all just people) that they think will make racism disappear. They have a deep emotional investment in the myth of sameness even as their actions reflect the primacy of whiteness as a sign informing who they are and how they think.