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The benefits of leaving your bubble
What does it take to relate to the ‘other’?
“One of the great tragedies of man’s long trek along the highway of history is the limiting of neighborly concern to tribe, race, class or nation. The consequences of this insular, narrow attitude is that one does not really mind what happens to people outside of his group.”
Martin Luther King Jr. made this statement over 50 years ago. Sadly, we as a society still have not taken his message to heart. We continue to separate ourselves by political party, class, sexual orientation and race, labeling those not in our group as the “other.”
This division is able to form and widen due to the lack of human-to-human interaction between members of opposing “tribes,” preventing a recognition of commonalities and an understanding of our differences.
But therein also lies hope: Once such human interaction is given a space and we seize the opportunity to break down walls, hearts can soften and minds open. That was made vividly clear to me while I read Anthony Ray Hinton’s memoir “The Sun Does Shine.”
Hinton was seized and arrested in front of his mother by a gang of racist white…
