I was born in a small town where everyone looked the same in being white and shared the same religion. At about twelve years of age, a black family moved into the neighborhood and it was scary, in part because I had never seen anyone who looked like that and because I had heard stories of what might happen to the community.

Fortunately, one of the children of the house was my age; we attended the same school and became friends. I also became friends with the two Native American students at the school. It seems strange since I attended a large school, but that was the extent of the diversity.

I now live in a large city that is racially diverse, people have moved here from just about every part of the earth. I love meeting and talking to people of other ethnic backgrounds. I feel comfortable amongst them and now when I visit a town that looks like the one I was born it, it feels scary.

It hurts me to see how this county has demonized people from Muslim and Latin American countries. It hurts me to witness intolerance of people based on nothing more that ethnicity, religion, sex, sexual preference, age, and so on. One God and one Goddess bless us all, and the Holy Teaching is inclusivity.

 Here is a verse from the Veda about compassion for others.

The relationship is binding, and to urge the disturbed to have compassion for and staying with helps, to convey you to paradise on one side the knowledge on the other from heaven for helping.