Cut me open and watch me bleed the red velvet color; I am a straight, white woman. Cut open the gay black man, cut open the Muslim child, cut open the white German man, cut open the immigrant from Mexico who has crossed over the borders, cut open the lesbian feminist, cut open the strangers you judge and fear, cut open your best friends, cut us open and see how we all bleed red.
I keep hearing how unalike we all are, how we immediately judge people who look different from us, categorizing them, fearing them. I keep hearing how quickly people react because a Muslim child brought a clock to school, how feminists are man-hating monsters, how we need to send all the immigrants back to where they came from, how “disgusting” same-sex marriage is, how many black people are dying from unnecessary shootings because they’re black. How is it that we’ve forgotten that we’re all human?
Race, gender, sexuality, religion, ethnicity, borders, educational status, oceans, language, class, age, all the things that make us different, and all the things that separate us don’t go unnoticed, and they shouldn’t. But these differences shouldn’t cause fear and hate upon one another, either. Although it's not easy, I think talking about this is important, I think we need to realize that we all have the same substance running through our veins, that we are all connected, and how that is deeper than our differences, that one person is not better than the other; I think we have all forgotten that we all bleed red.
Put down your guns; lay down your fears, judgments, and biased ways. Let’s open up our eyes and our hearts, let’s change the way things are going before we are in the middle of a battlefield fighting against people we don’t even know because they appear different from ourselves. Let’s stop listening to the madness and starting talking about how to fix it. Let’s be better people to each other, let’s stop only listening to what the media tells us, let’s stop assuming, let’s start with ourselves, and let’s make a difference.
