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When I started high school, I was excited to see that the curriculum in Spanish class had us learning about the culture of Spain and Latin America. After all, I’d just spent the summer in Colombia, eating, talking, and living the way Colombians did. I had a lot to share.
During my first week of travel, I felt like an outsider. What could I possibly have in common with people from a country halfway across the world — a country with an adversarial relationship to my own?
One day, my hosts took me to a basketball game at a Medellin high school, where one girl offered me a slice of mango and asked me about high school life in the U.S.: Did we have school dances? Exams? Hall monitors? Did everyone in the U.S. really have two cars? Did I have a boyfriend?
She helped me to see that although we came from two very different cultures, we still shared a lot in common. All we had to do was break down the artificial lines between us. That afternoon, we weren’t “American” and “Colombian” but two girls sharing snacks and giggling about boys.
It saddens me that such things don’t happen more often.
Despite the advances of the past 50 years regarding equality and civil liberties, many American schools are still segregated either by class or by choice. The law used to separate lunchrooms; now black, white, Latino and Asian students choose separate tables of their own volition.
If we want to move toward being a truly tolerant and diverse society, what’s going on?
Is diversity simply recognizing that there are other cultures and ways of life outside the ones in which one lives, or is there more to it?
Drawing artificial lines between groups of human beings is nothing new. Throughout history humanity seems to have had a tendency to divide between “us” and “them.” Romans versus barbarians. Catholics versus Protestants. Blacks versus whites.
In one of his letters, the apostle Paul tells the early Christians that there is no difference between Jew and Greek, slave and free, woman and man — that all, in fact, are equal “in the sight of God.” That was a revolutionary idea in a world that was as divided as we are today.
These days, the writings of Paul and other peacemakers such as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Pope John Paul II — are merciless in their criticism of those artificial dichotomies, and many teens are still raised on their lessons.
Why then did I walk into my college cafeteria to see students of different races seated at different tables? Why did I feel so much trepidation when I walked into that gymnasium in Medellin?
I think we need to not only strive for simple tolerance for different backgrounds and opinions, but to actively try to see others as worth something because of their innate humanity, not how much money they have, where they grew up or the color of their skin.
We need to celebrate our cultural differences, but never lose sight of the commonalities that make us all human. This begins at an individual level, with people willing to look beyond a different religion or political philosophy to see someone who loves and strives just like ourselves.
I believe that committing to active tolerance on a personal level is the first step in creating a truly equal society.
Why not try offering a mango — or a seat at your lunch table — to someone different? Perhaps we can work to make Paul’s revolutionary vision a reality.
Karen Dietlein Osborne is a syndicated columnist for Catholic News Service.
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