Color is light, or pigment. It can be shades or tints, a varying degree of hues, and they are all beautiful. Why is it that most people can recognize the beauty in the colors of the sky, or the land and sea, but fail to see their beauty when they see skin? Instead, insidious prejudice takes its place. In light of recent events, my heart is heavy and has sunken deep in my chest over the deaths of Alton Sterling, Philando Castile and the officers in Dallas who lost their lives protecting peaceful protesters. I am sad that this is not the first time these events have happened, and at this point, I'm not sure when it will end. We are mortally judging the humans we share this earth with, based upon their skin color, or because of the association they are part of.

Racism is unfortunately still an ongoing problem in America. The land of the free was segregated until 1964, that's younger than most of our grandparent's generation. We can stop pretending we've had more years of practice in treating people of color as equal human beings than years they were legislatively, and literally, slaves to the system. We can deny a system that benefits white people but none of this helps solve the problem. We go to the tops of mountains and we take pictures of colorful sunsets to post to our Instagram but we live in a world where the color of our skin could get us unjustly murdered.

Color Runs and festivals that honor Holi, an Indian celebration of color and love are widespread, but we have miles to go before those messages truly infiltrate every level of our society.

Racial bias is staggering. The prejudice against cops makes them feel unsafe, more threatened. We must protect ourselves and those we care about at all costs. I care about both communities because I care about the people I share a planet with. The labels we have decided to place upon one another should not be the reason we sentence each other to death. We can not fight violence with more violence. Hatefulness gorges itself on blood, we must starve the beast and let love live. Until then, we cannot ignore the racism, we cannot ignore the past of hate and hope it goes away, the only way to move forward is to face these problems head on, and fix them. Our Earth is populated with a diverse array of beautiful, colorful beings, we must come together to love and appreciate that.

"Researchers have proven, scientifically, that humans are all one people. The color of our ancestor's skin and ultimately my skin and your skin is a consequence of ultra-violet light, of latitude and climate. Despite our recent sad conflicts here in the U.S. there really is no such thing as race. We are one species. Each of us is much more alike than we are different. We all came from Africa. We're all made of the same star dust. We're all going to live and die on the same planet—a pale blue dot in the vastness of space. We have to work together," — Bill Nye.